Standardized Testing Can’t Measure What Matters
Quick: What’s the difference between No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top? Not much. As Diane Ravitch notes in a powerful and insightful essay in the New York Review of Books, both are part of what Pasi Sahlberg calls “the Global Education Reform Movement,” or...
The Happiness Contagion
Pay it Backward Have you ever had a stranger help you from out of the blue? Our good friend Don was recently thinking about the quality of empathy and what it would be like to receive such a random act of kindness. So on his way to work one day, while ordering coffee...
How to Treat ADHD Effectively? Pills, Skills & Love
Joseph, a five year old boy diagnosed with ADHD, was making good progress in yoga class at school. He was coming to friendship group once a week, and his mom and dad were working with me [Lynea] on parenting skills. For Joseph, change came slowly but consistently. He...
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.”...
Resolutions vs. Gratitude
My first yoga class of the year is always a big one – as many as 50 people squeezing into a small space, each wanting to start off the new year right. And usually, I ask my students about their “resolutions.” This year, though, was a bit unusual – not only for them...
Technology Alone Is Not Enough: Creativity, Vision & a Whole Child Approach to Education
Recently, Lynea and I were asked to speak at a conference about technology’s impact on education. Immediately, my thoughts turned to what we feel is one of the greatest challenges facing us as educators and parents: the addictive nature of electronic media and its...
Brain-Based Learning: Developing Empathy & Compassion
Four times a year, Lynea and I conduct our Certification Workshops. They’re among our favorite events. We love seeing how practitioners creatively apply Yoga Calm activities as they share the 5 class plans they create as part of the certification process! Each of...
Taking Care of Holiday Stress
It’s that time of year again. Despite nature’s call to slow down and hibernate, we tend to speed up and do more. Holiday commitments, family travels, the end of school terms and corporate years, shopping, family expectations and dynamics – it all adds up to a lot of...
Working with Yoga-Resistant Teens? Try These 7 Tips to “Meet Them Where They Are”
When it comes to sharing yoga, teens can be the toughest audience of all.buy propecia online gaetzpharmacy.com/propecia.html no prescription They may be invested in coolness, not wanting to show too much interest in anything they don’t discover on their own or that’s...
Yoga Calm for Halloween? Try the Archetype Game
Holidays stir up the imagination, especially for kids and especially around Halloween. Of course, that day is all about dressing up and pretending to be someone – or something – that you’re not. The practice can be traced back to ancient pagan, Celtic, Roman and...
9 Ways to Teach & Nurture Focus for Kids with ADHD
As we mentioned last time, the line between “normal” and behavior that signals ADHD can seem fuzzy at times. ADHD is marked by a weakness in the ability to sustain, shift or divide attention, coupled with a biologically-based weakness in the ability to control...
Boys Will Be Boys? Telling the Difference Between “Normal” & ADHD Behavior
We all know that ADHD is rampant – but just how much is “rampant,” exactly? As they say on Marketplace, “Let’s do the numbers.” As of 2007, almost 10% of children between the ages of 4 and 17 had been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their young lives. Most of...