Practical Mindfulness: Take 3 Breaths…
Transitions are an important time. Starting the school day, shifting from work mode to having a family meal, preparing for sleep are all key times to shift our attention. They are also the perfect opportunity to develop your mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is all...
Back-to-School: Build Community First – Free Lesson Plan & Video Included!
With so much to do at the beginning of the school year and so much going on, it’s easy for school staff to get distracted with all the administrative details, exigencies and logistics of just getting classrooms together. But experienced teachers and counselors know...
Keep those Kids Moving… into the Fall School Year
We’ve looked before at the relationship between physical activity and cognitive skills. The short version, as brain scientist John Medina has noted, is that our brains developed to work best while we’re moving in an outdoor environment. This is one of the reasons why,...
Summer Camp: Teaching with Nature (with Sample Curriculum & Activity!)
We love Yoga Calm Summer Camp week, which just wrapped up here at our studio in Portland. There’s just nothing quite like kids and summer – nature explorations, playing with friends, lots of physical activity, healthy fruits and vegetables from the back garden, and...
Coming Together in Our Care for Children: 2015 Summer Intensive Highlights
Our annual Summer Intensive – a training that encompasses our three basic Yoga Calm curriculum courses – is our favorite of the year. Not only do we get to spend time at relaxing studios and beautiful retreats such as Still Meadow here in Oregon; we get to meet and...
Meet Our Youngest Certified Youth Instructor, Aderyn McLean
When Kelly McLean was diagnosed five years ago with ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune form of arthritis, she followed her doctor’s recommendation and took up yoga. It helped her so much that she decided to become a yoga instructor and eventually earned her...
Receiving Your Students’ Gratitude – and Recognizing All the Good Work You Do
There’s nothing sweeter than a heartfelt thank you note written by a child. As teachers and counselors, we’re often so caught up in the day-to-day rush to educate and help our students, we don’t have time to recognize the impact of the good work we’re doing. While we...
Native American Mindfulness: All My Relations
“I’ve noticed that many people say that everything is connected,” said psychologist Leslie Gray at a recent workshop on Shamanic Counseling - a method of adapting indigenous healing practices to modern urban circumstances in an effective and vital way. “But they don’t...
Teaching Yoga to Preschoolers: What Works Best?
It was like magic. In a room crowded with more than 100 families, music blaring, pizza and popcorn booths scattered throughout, invariably, the kids would find us at the 50th anniversary celebration of Portland’s Head Start program. Our booth was simple, unadorned,...
Exercise and the Brain: How Fitness Improves Academic Performance
Guest post by kids’ yoga teacher Colleen Cash We all know it’s important for kids to move. Dozens of noncommunicable diseases, from heart disease to diabetes, are caused by inactivity, and lifelong activity patterns are often set by childhood habits. According to the...
TV, Teens and Trauma: 5 Tips for Taking Control
Though this year's Screen Free Week is now a fading memory, the reason for such events persists It’s tough to unplug from our electronic entertainment, isn’t it? Though Lynea and I watch less TV than the average American, even we “had” to watch American Idol,...
Social Skills Trump Technology
It’s easy – and tempting! – to think that technology can solve all of our problems and challenges. But some fascinating research to be presented at this month’s Annual Conference of the International Communication Association provides a good reminder that tech alone...