We’ve just been updating our schedule of upcoming Yoga Calm courses, and wanted to let you know about a couple new offerings in particular: Listening to the Body: Yoga Calm for Trauma and Love Knowledge & Action: Inspiring Environmental Stewardship
Taught by Lynea Gillen, Listening to the Body participants will learn how to combine simple yoga with effective counseling techniques for children and adults in one-on-one therapy sessions or small groups. Counselors and health providers will experience and learn innovative practices that include social/emotional skill building, breathing techniques and yoga poses.
This whole-client approach supports the development of wellness habits and directly addresses some of the most persistent physical symptoms of trauma such as dissociation, powerlessness, anxiety and sorrow. Participants will also learn self-care techniques, recognizing that by developing and presenting a calm presence, a safe and trusting relationship is more attainable, and counseling work is less stress inducing.
Taught by Lynea and Leah Shuyler, Love Knowledge & Action: Inspiring Environmental Stewardship demonstrates how Yoga Calm and environmental education activities can be used to develop high interest, interdisciplinary lessons that meet and support K-8 health, science and physical education standards and curricula.
Through exploring techniques of physical yoga, observation, self-reflection, social/emotional skills development, storytelling and simple schoolyard explorations, teachers, counselors and environmental educators will learn how to cultivate children’s innate curiosity and appreciation of their bodies, each other, animal life and other aspects of their natural, daily environment. This foundation provides the motivation and a powerful thematic basis for integrating more cognitive environmental education and natural science curricula.
With this creative, highly experiential and integrated approach to environmental education, meaningful connections between personal and planetary health can be drawn, fostering a lifelong interest in science and increased environmental citizenry and stewardship.
Both workshops will be offered for the first time this spring. CEUs are available for both, and registration is required.
As ever, more info is available at www.yogacalm.org.
– Jim Gillen
Child image by timheyer, via Flickr
