Tips to Help Kids Make Healthy Food Choices in a Junk Food Filled Environment
cproppe/Flickr One of the biggest and most persistent obstacles to kids' making healthy food choices is the heavy marketing of highly processed, usually sugar-laden junk food. It's not just about outright advertising such as commercials on TV - though there's plenty...
A Healthy Summer Treat
There are a few times each year when we're more apt than usual to indulge in delicious but not always healthy foods. Thanksgiving. Christmas. And summertime? You bet! Think of burgers, hot dogs and corn dogs at a theme park, ballpark or beach boardwalk. Think of the...
Yoga Calm for Pre-K & Other Sessions Added to Children’s Wellness Conference
Yoga Calm's inaugural Children's Wellness starts just a few weeks from now. This annual two day event features presentations, discussion panels and expert guest speakers on a variety of children’s health topics including Yoga Calm applications for ADHD, preschool,...
Becoming Mindful of Mindfulness
We live in a world of buzz and hum, light and noise, constant motion. We're constantly multitasking and living in future tense. We're bombarded with information, both through electronic media and the physical environment which seems ever more crowded and cacophonous...
This Summer, Relax, Renew & Refresh with Yoga Calm
One of the things we often hear from people who take our workshops is how surprised they are to learn so much in two days while leaving the workshop refreshed and relaxed. What’s the secret? It’s no secret at all to education researchers who have found that active...
Helping Kids Eat Better & Make Healthy Choices
If there’s any silver lining to the ongoing obesity epidemic, it’s that we’re finally coming to understand that what we eat matters – not just how much we eat but the quality of our food. Over the past decade, the conversation about this has been getting louder and...
Reducing Anxiety through Exercise
leah pritchard/Flickr Physical exercise has more than just physical benefits. For instance, as we wrote a while back, when kids exercise more, they also tend to achieve more academically. In Spark, John Ratey provides ample support for this as well as the many other...
Yoga in the Classroom Makes a Difference
One of the main questions administrators ask when the prospect of integrating yoga into the curriculum comes up is, "Why?" by which they're typically wanting to know how yoga connects with an academic mission and what the benefits of that connection are. Of course,...
Healthy Children = Healthy Planet, or “No Child Left Inside”
Health care and climate change dominate the headlines these days, but how are they related? Well, for one, through our children. In fact, no two issues will affect them more in their lifetimes – from supporting Medicare costs for us baby boomers to dealing with the...
Michelle Obama Says, “Let’s Move” – We Agree
Last month, we looked at how the distraction brought on by electronic media and multitasking can cause problems for kids - things like lower grades, mood swings and more behavioral issues. But it’s not just about mental distraction. There's a physical aspect as well....
Electronic Media and the Battle for Our Minds
When was the last time you had an hour – an hour without distractions – just to think about things? Or even a half hour? Fifteen minutes? As I write this blog, instant messages flash up on my second monitor while my printer churns out workshop handouts and my cell...
Emotional Learning and Growth
One of the things that makes Valentine's Day such a unique holiday is that it's the only one that doesn't commemorate an event or honor a person or the passage of time. It's about a feeling: love. hint of plum/Flickr And it can be a little emotionally...