Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Strengthening Family Ties Through Yoga
By Lynea Gillen I once led a yoga class for a family that had been involved in Yoga Calm for several years. About halfway through, one of the older girls who hadn’t practiced in a while quietly said, “It’s good to be back.” Her mother smiled. Yes, it is good to get...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Ideas for Cultivating Gratitude in the K-8 Classroom
In our work with teachers and counselors around the United States, we're in a unique position to see what trends and common issues face schools. One particularly strong trend through recent years has been an emphasis on social and emotional learning (SEL) to help...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: How to Help Kids Manage Big Emotions
One afternoon in my counseling office, I was working with two boys. I told them if they played quietly while I spoke with their mother, they would each be able to choose something from the treasure box at the end of the session. They were terrific. So, as promised, I...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: The Place of Radical Caring in Education
In angry, challenging times like our own, it’s all the more important for us to pay attention to reminders of the best we can be. They are a source of hope, courage, motivation. One especially marvelous reminder can be found in the acclaimed documentary Won’t You Be...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: The Many Ways of Mindfulness
It was a lovely, sunny, summer day, and there I was beating myself up a bit for slacking on my meditation practice. Then my 7-year old granddaughter Anna rushed up and tugged at my arm. “Come on, Grandma. Come out and play with me!” So I followed her as she ran across...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Emotions Are Central to Learning
There are those who think bringing social-emotional learning into the classroom is some sort of fad. Not so, asserts a national commission report from the Aspen Institute. “The promotion of social, emotional, and academic learning…is the substance of education...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: 6 Tips for Nurturing Hope
Some people seem to think of hope as kind of a feeling that comes and goes. Others understand it more as part of a person’s very constitution - you’re either an optimist or a pessimist, and once the thought pattern is set, that’s that. But in fact, hope is something...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Bringing Mindful Movement to the Classroom
It's a challenge most every teacher faces once the new school year begins: Guiding students through the annual shift from more active leisure time to being expected to sit still at a desk for 6 or more hours a day. That's a pretty significant expectation. Why Movement...
Yoga Is Not Mindfulness. Mindfulness Arises Through Yoga
Yoga Calm users know from experience how it can help kids with ADHD. Still, it’s always good to see and know that scientific evidence supports this, too. Such evidence was on full display in a new systematic review that dropped earlier this month, echoing a similar...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Bullying & the Language of the Body
A wonderful anecdote from senior yoga teacher Patricia Walden has stuck with me since I first read it some years ago in a post at Yoga Journal. She recalled a statement BKS Iyengar made to her when she struggled with depression: "If you open your armpits, you'll never...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Where Physical Yoga & Principles Meet
One of the most indelible and defining moments in my training to become a yoga teacher began with a loud POP! At first, I thought it was my classmate’s back adjusting as our instructor led her into an advanced pose, but the look on her face said, “This is serious.”...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: How Trauma Changes the Brain, How Strength Transforms Trauma
By Lynea Gillen It was clear that the young men in the psychiatric unit weren’t much interested in yoga. Struggling with addiction and mental health, they appeared cautious, wounded, apathetic. Lounging in their hospital scrubs, they shot us suspicious glances. “We...