We Care About Kids’ Physical, Emotional, & Social Well-Being. What About Their Digital Well-Being?
Two new studies have added to the mountain of evidence for the negative impact of social media on kids’ health and well-being. One, in Psychology of Popular Media, showed that limiting social media led emotionally distressed kids to feel better about their appearance...
Physical Exercise : Social Exercise
Three years ago, Lynea was blogging about the importance of loose social ties. Within weeks, the stay-at-home orders began - and went on much longer than any of us could have imagined. Then, as now, we had to smile at the irony of this, even as it put into focus just...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Integrating Physical Yoga with Social/Emotional Learning (SEL)
Over the 15 years we’ve been blogging, it’s been a joy every time we’ve been able to share the experiences of teachers, counselors, and other helping professionals using Yoga Calm in their work with children. Their observations and reflections offer such great models...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Using Rewards
It's hard to believe that this year will mark the 15th anniversary of this blog! Recognizing that fact, we thought it would be fun to reach way back into the archives and share one of our earliest posts. We settled on this one from November 2008, which has not lost a...
Helping Our Children Find Their Authentic Super Powers
Many years ago, I attended a wonderful workshop on inner power led by a Native American Elder from Nevada. Within the interconnectedness of life, he told us, each being has its own power and everything is equally important. “The power of the bee is different from the...
Social Media & the Youth Mental Health Crisis
Most of us understand that there’s no one single cause of the current youth mental health crisis. Still, it was hard not to cheer a little inside over the news that Seattle Public Schools has filed suit against Facebook, TikTok, and other big social media companies,...
The Yoga Calm Blog Year in Review, 2022
Before another word, Happy New Year! We hope that 2023 brings you all the good things you seek - and carries us all closer to a future that is kinder, more compassionate, understanding, forgiving, and just. That hope in no way obliterates the tremendous amount of good...
Mindfulness Principles: Community
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been looking at the principles that we developed Yoga Calm around: Stillness, Listening, Grounding, Strength, and, now, finally, Community. But although it’s the last principle, Community is central to the practice as a whole. In...
Mindfulness Principles: Strength
The first three Yoga Calm Principles covered in this series - Stillness, Listening, and Grounding - establish some basic tools for self-regulation. They also lay the foundation for the next Principle we’ll explore: Strength. Strength is more than just muscle power, of...
Mindfulness Principles: Grounding
Like the first two principles in this series, the third focuses on a key aspect of mindfulness. Where Stillness prepares for Listening and Listening puts attention on the present moment, Grounding brings a person physically, cognitively, and emotionally into the...
Mindfulness Principles: Listening
Part 2 of a 5-part series. Read Part 1 here. I was having a very busy day, with a long list of students who still needed to be seen. It was Friday, and as a school counselor, I felt like I didn’t have much left to give. Fridays often felt that way. I was ready for a...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Stillness
Although originally developed in an elementary classroom to be used primarily in school settings, Yoga Calm has come to be used in many different environments: hospitals, clinics, juvenile detention facilities, yoga studios, churches, and, of course, homes. It’s...