How Mindful Movement Can Help Our Littlest Learners
If you’ve witnessed stressed little ones find calm or hyperactive preschoolers grow focused thanks to a simple yoga flow or even a couple minutes of following a breathing sphere, you understand the power of mindful movement. You’ve seen it first hand. What you’ve...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Teens Talk About Trauma
Silence isn’t singular. There are lots of different kinds. There’s the positive silence you experience in mindful meditation, for instance, or defiant silence, where the withholding of information becomes a form of power. And then there’s the silence that comes from...
How Yoga Can Help Kids with Sensory Differences
Digital media can present all kinds of challenges for kids. Sometimes, it’s about content - extreme depictions of violence, for instance, or self-harming behaviors. Sometimes, it’s about the theft of time from activities that are critical to children’s healthy...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Bringing What Matters into Focus
Sometimes even a slight change in perspective can be absolutely transformative, as Jim Gillen describes in this post we originally published back in 2017… My first yoga class of the year is always a big one – as many as 50 people squeezing into a small space, each...
Mindful Movement in the Elementary School Classroom & Its Impact on Self-Regulation
The holiday season is here, and, as every teacher knows, it usually proves to be one of the most hectic times of year. December often demands an extra dose of patience and energy from us when our reserves may be nearly tapped. So we’ll keep this week’s post short and...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Practicing Gratitude
Although Thanksgiving Day has passed, giving thanks isn't something to be relegated to just one day of the year. It's an every day thing, and that ongoing gratitude is something that supports our health and well-being, as well as our hearts and our minds. Gratitude...
“I’m Just Ken”: Too Many Boys Being Left Behind & Some Ways of Fixing That
There are so many ways you can understand the recent blockbuster Barbie, a film we finally got around to streaming not too long ago. Most obviously, it’s a multifaceted critique of patriarchy. Barbieland itself, as psychotherapist Wendy Jones astutely noted not long...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: 9 Tips for Talking with Children about Tragedies
If you’re GenX or a Boomer, you probably remember growing up with at least some fear of nuclear war. The threat reverberated throughout the media. At particularly tense times, Cold War conflict dominated the news cycle - just as hostilities between Israel and Hamas...
Teaching Students to Listen to Their Inner Voice
Last time, we looked a bit at the importance of helping children listen to what their body is telling them. Just as important is helping them hear their inner voice - the voice of heart, of our inner wisdom, of the essence of who we are and who we are becoming. In...
Is It Trauma Speaking or a Tantrum? A Real Need or Indulgence?
Several years ago, I was working with a 4-year old girl who I’ll call “Joy.” She had experienced trauma, and her mother was very worried about her. Joy often had angry outbursts, and her mother wanted to be sure she was providing good support. At the end of one of our...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Listening to Yourself, Listening to Others
Updated from the original Hearing is just a physiological happening: You perceive sound. But listening? Listening happens when your brain makes meaning out of sound. It involves your active participation, whether you’re listening to others, your environment, or...
Yoga Calm Fundamentals: Why Helping Kids Reconnect with Nature Matters So Much
Updated from the original If you’re GenX or older, there’s a good chance you think of summer as outdoor time and back-to-school as a return to a mostly indoor routine - and daydreams of running about and playing freely all day in the sun, including plenty of time in...