Kids Yoga

5 Sure-Fire Kids Yoga Exercises

Five Kids Favorites
Simply put, there are some yoga poses that the kids ask for and some that they don’t. Surprisingly, a lot of the favorites are warm-up poses that get the circulation going after a long day of sitting at a desk.

These are what I get the most requests for in yoga class:

Washing Machine: This is a great Kundalini Yoga warm-up that kids love because it is active and fun! In easy pose put your hands on your shoulders (fingers in front, thumbs in back). Then twist left and right like a washing machine. You can do breathing – inhaling as you go left and exhaling as you go right, but it’s also fun to say “swish, swish” as you go to each side. (Bonus Pose: Follow this one up with Dryer Pose where you rotate your hands around each other in front of your chest – said to be great for co-ordination and the brain)
Bicycle: In yoga we do bicycle lying on the back and pedaling our legs in the air (see picture). Finish by pedalling up a hill then going down the hill holding your legs stretched wide by your head and shout, “weeeeeeeeee!” (you don’t need to peddle down a hill!)
Tricky Tree: A favorite in the partner yoga genre. In tree pose, both partners face forward and balance on one foot. Instead of putting your foot on your own leg, stretch it towards your partner and let them hold it up for you. One person holds a foot in front and the other person holds the foot behind their leg. You kind of look like a capital “H” when you do it. It is very tricky for pre-schoolers so you may need to help them balance in this one.
Human Teacher Puppet: Want to get everyone’s attention in a class? Let one child sit on your lap and pretend they are teaching the class. Gently hold their wrists and move their arms around for them in a very animated way as you describe the next pose. Use different voices and accents, try hand gestures like using their hand to scratch their head or blow kisses. This is so popular the kids may start to jump on your lap the moment you sit down – so develop some kind of system to keep track of which kids have had a turn.
The Worry Tree: This is a beautiful image we use for relaxing. We have an imagination session for relaxation and go to different places in our imagination. At the beginning of the session we put all our worries on a big tree we call The Worry Tree. You put all the worries you can think of on there and when you are done then you start your imagination session. This is another one kids will ask for at the beginning of the class.

Let me know how these work for you or tell me your most requested poses.

Aruna Humphrys

www.YoungYogaMasters.com

Yoga means Fun, Health and Laughter for Kids

Wanna hear a joke?

Jokes are fun for kids and adults yoga – even when they are groaners. The point of joking? Don’t take life so seriously. In fact one of the best ways to feel Unity is to just have fun.

Laughing Yoga for Kids
Whenever I want to have fun with the kids in yoga class we do Laughing Yoga. It is a great way to get everyone to have fun and relax and enjoy the bliss of living. Laughter is a powerful tool to get people breathing deeply too – especially with belly laughter, not to mention all the health benefits – just ask Patch Adams, an MD who started a movement to get clowns in every hospital.

The other advantage of laughter yoga is that it helps people learn how to lighten up. When we do laughter yoga with kids or adults, we will do different yoga poses and laugh while we do them. Sometimes, we just laugh alone too. But before we begin laughing I like to explain one thing.
I want people to get themselves to laugh, too often people feel they have to be tickled (or hear a joke) to laugh. Here’s how I teach it:

Invisible Fingers are Tickling You
Lets Imagine “invisible fingers” are tickling us. I ask someone what invisible means and get different definitions. But I make sure they also learn that invisible means “in” which is inside you, and visible. In-visible means you see it inside; which is not the same as non-visible or un-visible. I liken it to their imagination – which we see inside us first too. Now as you do the pose everyone feel the invisible fingers tickling you and laugh.

Laughter Yoga: Tree, Bridge, and Cow

This way everyone does the yoga pose and it helps with classroom management because real tickling can lead to big pile ups of kids. We do laughing tree, tickling bridge, and even in cat cow we will laugh like a cat and a cow would laugh.

It is a lot of fun and no one in the room can resist smiling when they hear all the laughter.

By the way, in case you don’t know:

What did the police officer say to the yogi who was meditating?
You have the right to remain silent! (Did you laugh?)

Aruna Humphrys

www.YoungYogaMasters.com

Teaching Pre-Schoolers

Hopping for Joy

Someone asked me in an e-mail about tips to teach young kids in daycare. I’ve been teaching in daycare for a number of years and it is a great place to have classes. The kids are already there – so you don’t have to do any registration. Also you have the support of the teachers who can help with classroom management. And it is a way to teach more daytime classes instead of weekends and evening.

Plus, I love the idea of bringing the powerful concepts of the Ancients to children. Children are subtly getting messages all the time in the stories and songs they sing. Here is an example of a pre-school song used in a lot of daycares. Then you will see the adustments I have made to make it yoga style.

Sleeping bunnies
In this song the kids pretend they are sleeping bunnies then wake up and hop around. It has a build in resting period (the “still” part) and then action, the hopping. The big finish – “stop” sets the limits in the song and gets everyone to freeze.

Here is the original version I learned at daycare:

See the sleeping bunnies, sleep till nearly noon.
How shall we wake them? With a merry tune.
Oh so still
are they ill?
Wake up little bunnies hop, hop, hop
Wake up little bunnies hop, hop, hop
Wake up little bunnies hop and stop!

Question: Why is stillness connected to being ill? This song must be from the old days when disease was rampant and people lived in fear of it.

Just Change It

I like to change this to “Oh so still, what a thrill.” or sometimes, “oh so still, are they meditating?” Even though it doesn’t rhyme – it is fun to surprise the kids and teachers with it.

Then I do a whole bunch of animals with this song – like:

– see the sleeping snakes – hiss, hiss, hiss.
– see the sleeping elephants – swing your trunk…swing and stop.
– see the sleeping dinosaurs (this is often a request from kids) – roar, roar, roar.

Taking Poetic Yogic Liscence
We are taking Yogic liscence to go ahead with the song even though it doesn’t rhyme. The possibilities are endless for the animals you can do. I have done a whole lesson plan with kids from ages 1 1/2 – 5 with this song. Even older kids like it when there is the variety. Try one animal each class as part of a warm-up routine.

The kids give lots of animal ideas and I like to challenge myself to make them work.

Some times when the “stop” comes and everyone is frozen I walk around the room observing the poses everyone has frozen in and commenting on each one. This gives a little more time for them to hold the pose and keep themselves under control. It is also a great time to connect with each child, look them in the eye, and give them a compliment.

Or why not ask everyone to “stop” in a yoga pose at the end. Anything is possible.

“We live in a world we have imagined.”
Tulshi Sen, author, Ancient Secrets of Success for Todays World, p. 146

Imagination is the most powerful tool you can use for teaching pre-schoolers.

When we activate our imaginations and feel the freedom to change things and make things up we can really have a lot of fun doing it.

Aruna Kathy Humphrys
www.YoungYogaMasters.com

Getting the Jar Open

How Beautiful is the Opening

“We are containers of Love and our only purpose of life is to love and pour out love.”

Tulshi Sen’s Morning Talk: A Story About the Jar of Love

Occasionally a class can feel like a struggle. In retrospect, I

see I’m like a jar closed tight that I can’t get open to enjoy the good stuff inside it. Nothing can penetrate.

My favorite way to teach is to be open with the class. When I plan my classes I have a theme in mind (my motif – see the last entry) and a few key ideas, but I don’t plan every detail. When

I am open to the suggestions and ideas that always come up we have much more fun.

Who’s Hiding Under the Blanket?

On the them

Searching & Discovering – we played a hiding game this week. I used a thin wool shawl that you cannot see through and after the yoga pose everyone rested in child pose. Then I quietly walked around the room and slipped the blanket over one person and everyone guessed who’s under the blanket.

I played it in a few of the rooms in the daycare and we had alot of fun. When I got to the pre-schooler’s (age 2 1/2 – 4 years) they delighted in taking turns going under the blanket. So before we “hid” the kids said – “Now it’s Brianna’s turn to hide.”

The Fun of Flowing
These kids were enjoying a different kind of fun. When they popped up from under the blanket, smiling and arms stretched out in joy – it was an absolute delight. The teachers and parents watching could not help but get caught up in it. A magic had been opened up and poured out into the room.

That magic always trumps any of my other themes! It is the purpose and the reason I love teaching children’s yoga.

Here’s a fun post from David in Brazil describing one of his early experiences flowing with children’s yoga:

http://www.findbalance.net/casa-de-zezinho/

Sitting Under the Wish Fulfilling Tree

Ancient Secrets/Modern Terms
With all the talk about The Secret, the Law of Attraction, Oprah’s book club and everything else, I’m reminded of an Ancient Story that my teacher told me that basically says the same thing. I tell it in my children’s yoga classes regularly.

It’s the story of The Wish Fulfilling Tree which explains How to Guard the Self-Sabotaging Mind. In brief, the story tells of a poor farmer who sits under a tree for shade only to discover it is The Wish Fulfilling Tree. Everything that he thinks of magically appears before him and he is in bliss just thinking of everything he wants. Until….

You guessed it! He stars to worry and “POOF” his worries come to life as well.

“This power works without question or pause and will not judge your wishes, it will fulfill them instantly.” Tulshi Sen, Ancient Secrets of Success for Today’s World

I tell this story to show kids that the Law of Attraction is a great boon, but it can also be a wretched curse if you cannot control your thinking. This is why we do meditation – even with kids. We do it for ourselves and to improve our own lives – not for anyone else.

Free Resources On-line
I listen to these Daily Talks to help me be aware of my thinking. We’ve got to keep a watchful eye on our thinking or it can slip into worry, or worse, so easily. As it says in the latest talk – a good day or a bad day is determined by your thinking. Can you control your thinking?

New talks are being posted regularly.

Oneness: Serious or Fun?

What is YOUR Inner Teacher Like?

One of the reason’s I love teaching children yoga is to see the way kids understand the great notions we ponder in meditation, especially compared to adults.

For instance we’ll talk about the idea of Intuition – the inner teacher, the wisdom within. Both adults and children love this but when adults hear about it they get all profound and deep about connecting with their teacher inside, they take it really seriously.

When I talk to kids about it and ask if they’ve heard of the teacher inside, they mostly say yes. Then if I ask for examples, they say things like this one girl did who clearly knew what she was talking about:

“yes I felt my teacher inside one day when I was waiting for the subway and I really wanted to throw my retainer onto the subway tracks, but I just put it in my pocket instead.”

Can you believe she felt her teacher inside wanted her to throw her retainer onto the tracks and be free? It was her mind who remembered she would have a lotta explaining to do when she got home. So she chose not to do it.

Good or bad? Who cares! She knew inner wisdom when she felt it!

“If we are not Conscious of a thing, that thing does not exist for us. Consciousness is our life. When we are unconscious we don’t feel. Life is feeling.”

Tulshi Sen, p. 89, Ancient Secrets of Success for Today’s World

Aruna Humphrys