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

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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?

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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.

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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.

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For all of you who have attended my workshop Once Upon a Pose, this short guided visualization will bring back wonderful memories of the last few minutes we spent together exploring the world of children’s yoga. My Favourite Colour is the guided visualization included at the back of the FREE e-book The Pet Store/L’animalerie, which you can download by entering your name and e-mail in the right side bar.

So close your eyes, sit back, and breathe.

Many more guided visualizations for relaxation which are easy to do with children are included in the book Once Upon a Pose: A Guide to Yoga Adventure Stories for Children, Chapter #6: Relaxation.

I hope you have a wonderful day filled with light, vitality and energy. Namaste.

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Yoga Jenga

Take a jenga game and write a different pose on each block. I took inspiration from the 60 poses included in Once Upon a Pose writing the English pose name on one side and the French name of the other thereby creating a bilingual game (the name in Sanskrit, Spanish, German, etc. would be equally as effective – See Language Learning Thru Yoga).

Have a couple of kids set up the game by stacking three blocks across three blocks until a tower is formed.

Choose a child to carefully remove a jenga block.

Perform the yoga pose written on the block.

You can place the block back on to the top of the jenga tower in order for it to continue to build. If you don’t want to repeat any poses during the class simply place the used jenga blocks off to one side. As well we more often than not simply run out of time long before the tower comes down.

Choose another child and repeat until all children have had a turn, class is over, or the tower falls over.

Visit the Yoga Games page for more engaging yoga activities to use in your class. Also join us on Facebook and check out our YouTube Channel where there is always lots of great content to keep your kids and teen yoga classes fun and inspiring.

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Darn it, he caught me. In almost every kids or teens yoga class I teach I tend to sneak in core subjects like math, science, social studies and language arts. For the most part the students are so involved with the poses, the breathing and having fun they don’t realise the basic skills they are applying. It’s kinda like the vegetables I sneak into our family’s marinara sauce – please don’t tell my children it’s good for them.

I was thrilled when I discovered this fun video of algebra symbols done using yoga as an extra credit assignment. The fact that the ladies had a good sense of humour and used Barbies makes it a classic.

See Calculating Area and Pythagorean Theoremfor other ways to incorporate yoga with math classes. When you use yoga during traditional subjects you engage students’ kinesthetic learning abilities and involve more senses. This leads to greater understanding and retention, especially as more and more abstract concepts are introduced in class. This helps students move from concrete to abstract operations with greater ease and according to their individual biological and maturational factors (see Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Stages).  But that’s really enough educational psychology for today.

To see yoga applied across the curriculum visit the Yoga Classroom page.

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We’ve all heard it, maybe even said it. But what does it mean? Most often the response is tensing the muscles, sticking the chest out and pulling the head back. WRONG! The spine has two natural curves (called double C or S curves) which help to maintain balance, allow movement and absorb shock (like springs). When you stand up straight you need to allow these natural curves to do their work. As you do so, your posture, muscle tone and overall health will improve.

Why Bother with Good Posture

1. Poor posture looks bad – slouching conveys a lack of interest, energy and vitality
2. Poor posture is unhealthy – bad habits can cause problems with joints, muscles, the spine & internal organs
3. Good posture commands respect – carry yourself with confidence and others will look to you as a leader
4. Good posture feels better – optimism, good health and positive self esteem result from working with the body instead of against it

Standing Tall: Discover the Mid-line

Properly performing mountain pose is the first step to improving and maintaining good posture.  Your aim is to learn about the mid-line of the body which divides the body into front and back, left and right. For most individuals this means

• standing a little more onto the front of the foot instead of resting the weight back on the heals
• allowing the hips to become level by balancing equally on both feet
• engaging the core muscles to support the spine
• leveling the shoulders to form a T with the spine
• imagining the crown of the head lifting up as if attached to a helium balloon

When first learning how to stand up straight it is sometimes helpful to use a full length mirror to visually reinforce what level looks and feels like. Numerous other yoga poses are fantastic for improving posture. Check out the Alphabetical List of Poses for more information.

StraightenUp has this poster with easy to do exercises for kids which help promote good posture.

Sitting Tall: Wow, Sitz Bones

One pose that is extremely helpful to teaching good posture when sitting is boat pose. Whenever I teach this pose, the students and I discuss sitz bones (ischial tuberosity), those boney protrusions on the bottom of the pelvis, and how they differ in purpose with the tail bone (coccyx). It’s important to sit on your sitz bones, its what they were made for, not on your tail bone, to maintain proper curves of the spine, allow the internal organs space to function, permit full use of the lungs, and lengthen the hamstrings.

An easy way to discover your sitz bones is to sit on the floor with your feet in front of you, legs bent, hands on knees. Extend your spine and lift your chest. You are now on your sitz bones. Roll back so that you are sitting on your tailbone. Roll forward and feel your sitz bones ‘click’. Repeat rolling back and forth until you are aware of how it feels to sit on your sitz bones.

If you enjoyed this post be sure to subscribe (RSS or e-mail) to continue to receive hints and tips on healthy living for children and teens.

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It’s great for your breathing, flexibility and stress relief and it isn’t just for grown-ups. Donna Freeman is the founder of YogaInMySchool.com, an innovative program aimed at kids and teens, and she joins Breakfast Television with a few young friends.

Teens are at an ideal age to practice yoga. It helps them de-stress, focus, develop mentally, emotionally and physically, get to know themselves and become all they can be.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Original air date: April 26/2010

Stacey Betts shares her own personal story of raising two children with Aspergers and PDD (Pervasive Developmental Disorder). She talks about how yoga addresses the physcial and emotional issues typical of Autism Spectrum Disorders such as poor muscle tone, digestive issues, balance, anxiety and depression. As well, Stacey addresses the need for parents and caregivers to build a suport network and to take care of themselves. Finally she stresses the need to approach yoga for children and teens with autism in a flexible manner, being prepared to adapt the practice to the needs of each individual. You’ll enjoy Stacey’s candid and frank manner and her helpful hints on living with autism.

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