Laying the Foundation
When it comes to teaching children’s yoga or any type of yoga, and probably any subject, every teacher must draw from the principles of their subject. This is what my teacher calls the motif.
Without recognizing the foundations of your yoga, classes will just be exercise classes. There is nothing wrong with exercise classes and they can be very fun and healthy but yoga classes have a foundation in the yoga teachings.
Everyone is coming from a different lineage of teachings based on the teacher or philosophies they have learned from. This becomes the basis of what you will imagine and design for your cl
asses so that they ring true for you and engage your students.
There are many ways to teach children’s yoga and it is easy to copy one of them. A common exercise in an art class is to copy the Masters’ work. But that is not the end, every artist must the
n discover their own style. If your whole life you copy someone else your life will get boring and so will your teaching.
The Guiding Principles
As you have probably noticed, my guiding principles are laid out in Ancient Secrets of Success for Today’s World by Tulshi Sen. Tulshi Sen is a great poet, visionary, and ground-breaker. He inspires and challenges people to think for themselves and live an extraordinary life. This is a lineage of leaders not followers who defy the impossible and romance with life.
The motif of my classes is influenced by these principles. For instance, when we do tree pose we don’t just pretend to be a tree, we are a tree. We
feel what a tree feels, the coolness in the ground, the hard bark over our bodies, the birds living in our branches.
Giving Children the Skills of the Future
By doing this children can see things in new ways, think for themselves, and develop powerful imaginations. This will give them a real edge in the coming times where creativity and ingenuity will be highly sought after. Children are the leaders of the future and will be faced with problems many call impossible.
The motif for my classes is described in Ancient Secrets of Success for Today’s World – p. 104:
your thinking will almost blend into the enchanting world of fantasy.
You will be able to vision things that you could not vision before,
what you considered impossible will become possible.
It won’t be fantasy for you it will be your reality.
Then you can “Dream the impossible dream.”
Then you will realize the meaning of All things are possible with God.”
