Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Identifying & Working with Feelings
It’s a familiar idiom on social media: I feel some feels. I’ve got all the feels. This hits me right in the feels. Shorthand for the word “feelings,” Know Your Meme describes “feels” as a word used to describe an intense emotional response, such as sadness, excitement...
The Need to Nurture Good Human Skills
We all know school is about so much more than just academic learning. Yes, the knowledge gained in reading, math, history, science, writing and the like is important. The academic foundation gives them the necessary tools to keep learning and growing their brain...
“Less Stress & More Classroom Success” for Latino Kids through Mindful Movement
While the youth mental health crisis doesn’t discriminate, some populations have taken a harder hit than others. According to a four-year study out of DePaul University that explored pre- and post-pandemic mental health among elementary and middle school kids (age 11...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: How to Use a Breathing Sphere in Your Classroom or Home School Setting
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...
How Mindful Movement Can Help Our Littlest Learners
If you’ve witnessed stressed little ones find calm or hyperactive preschoolers grow focused thanks to a simple yoga flow or even a couple minutes of following a breathing sphere, you understand the power of mindful movement. You’ve seen it first hand. What you’ve...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Teens Talk About Trauma
Silence isn’t singular. There are lots of different kinds. There’s the positive silence you experience in mindful meditation, for instance, or defiant silence, where the withholding of information becomes a form of power. And then there’s the silence that comes from...
How Yoga Can Help Kids with Sensory Differences
Digital media can present all kinds of challenges for kids. Sometimes, it’s about content - extreme depictions of violence, for instance, or self-harming behaviors. Sometimes, it’s about the theft of time from activities that are critical to children’s healthy...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Bringing What Matters into Focus
Sometimes even a slight change in perspective can be absolutely transformative, as Jim Gillen describes in this post we originally published back in 2017… My first yoga class of the year is always a big one – as many as 50 people squeezing into a small space, each...
Mindful Movement in the Elementary School Classroom & Its Impact on Self-Regulation
The holiday season is here, and, as every teacher knows, it usually proves to be one of the most hectic times of year. December often demands an extra dose of patience and energy from us when our reserves may be nearly tapped. So we’ll keep this week’s post short and...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Practicing Gratitude
Although Thanksgiving Day has passed, giving thanks isn't something to be relegated to just one day of the year. It's an every day thing, and that ongoing gratitude is something that supports our health and well-being, as well as our hearts and our minds. Gratitude...
“I’m Just Ken”: Too Many Boys Being Left Behind & Some Ways of Fixing That
There are so many ways you can understand the recent blockbuster Barbie, a film we finally got around to streaming not too long ago. Most obviously, it’s a multifaceted critique of patriarchy. Barbieland itself, as psychotherapist Wendy Jones astutely noted not long...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: 9 Tips for Talking with Children about Tragedies
If you’re GenX or a Boomer, you probably remember growing up with at least some fear of nuclear war. The threat reverberated throughout the media. At particularly tense times, Cold War conflict dominated the news cycle - just as hostilities between Israel and Hamas...