Blending Breath Work and Social/Emotional Skills-Building

Upon completing our Integrated Approach to Wellness 1 workshop, Debi Doyle, a school counselor in Mukilteo, Washington, wrote to us about how she’s been applying Yoga Calm in her work with kids:

 

Lately, I have been focusing on breath work with my students, trying to decide how to fuse this with the social skills lessons we already do. Recently, I discovered one way.

On Mondays, I see six classes, and on this particular day, a second grade class was the first to come. As they did, I remained seated, quietly moving a Hoberman sphere in rhythm with my breath. It was my first time using this tool, and I was very curious to see how effective it could be with the variety of classes that I see.

Without a word, the students entered in their normal fashion and sat in a circle on the floor. In less than a minute, the room was filled with 25 peacefully breathing second graders.

I asked if the students knew what their bodies were doing as they watched the “breathing ball.” One of the boys answered, “I’m breathing along with it.”

At this, I gave him a turn to sit in my spot and use the sphere. As he did, I got a small drum out and drummed in rhythm to his movement.

After a while, I asked another student if she would like a turn and asked the first student if he would like to take a turn on the drum. I briefly explained the drum’s purpose to him, and with that, the pair of students began, with the class silently following for a bit of time.

 

 

I then asked the class if they had any compliments for the pair. Without question, they received some of the most heartfelt and sincere compliments I have heard a group of students give.

All this activity was a perfect transition to talk about our breath at play, rest and while learning. Using the Hoberman sphere, I showed them their recess breath, running to line up, a few big sighs and then how each of them could calm their minds and bodies just by using their breath.

In another class, I gave the sphere to some kids on the Autistic spectrum. One who rarely has a successful time in my room was able to enter my class and join us quietly that day. Without a word, he watched what was going on and followed what he saw. I gave him a turn with the sphere, which he did really well. When it was his turn to drum, he worked very hard to figure out how to find a quiet rhythm. At first, he banged loudly. Then he adjusted to a quieter strike but took the stick back with great force. I noticed many of his classmates cringing at this, then relaxing when they saw how gently he struck the drum. We saw that he was just using an arcing motion to beat the drum – the best way he found to make the sound soft.

As I watched, I noticed how I had to bite my tongue a couple times to allow him to find his way. I became aware of how often we jump in to correct those who learn in an unconventional manner. Instead of him getting the message, “You can’t; let me show you,” he was able to experience, “You will figure it out; you are capable.”

I love learning from kids.

During the following Compliments activity, many of this boy’s peers were able to express to him how they liked how he had adjusted his drumming. They told him how they saw how hard he was concentrating. No wonder he came in the next week all excited for more! This kid had rarely gotten any communication from his peers, let alone positive words. Now he was being noticed for his teamwork and perseverance.

I am really beginning to see how beneficial it is to use what I have learned in Yoga Calm and integrate it into the Second Step lessons in the classroom. At this point, I am not sure the kids would let me go back to the way we did things without Yoga Calm.

Used by permission

Igniting Children’s Interest, Moving the World

by Amy Halloran-Steiner, Certified Yoga Calm Instructor

Recently, our family camped on the bank of Oregon’s Metolius River, on a second annual event there with two other families and a total of six children under age four. I did plenty of yoga with them, letting them choose their favorite poses from Yoga Calm for Children. We did plenty of Mountain, Tree and Downward Dog. We posed as eagles (adapted for their ability, of course), each waiting to pounce on a mouse.

The third morning, I noticed the kids restless and in need of distraction, munching graham crackers and wandering about. So I asked them, “Do you know the Graham Cracker Pose?” Usually knowledgeable about whatever the topic, the two oldest girls looked at me quizzically.  So, I led: arms straight up to the sky, wrists bent at 90 degrees, fingers activated, tips pointing toward one another to make the upward edge of the cracker. The kids grinned and assumed the pose.  Then we swept downward, doubling at the waist to break our graham cracker in half, because where else would be insert the – you guessed it – marshmallow?!

“Come on, Kids,” I said as we moved into a “Marshmallow Pose,” holding our heads high and circling our arms in front of us, as though holding a big ball in front of our belly.

“But what happens when the stick…?” offered one of the kids.

“Okay,” I replied. “Now we stand tall and thin, arms up, palms together, fingers pointing at the sky. Don’t bend and poke anyone near you, good roasting stick!”

“What about when the stick holds the marshmallow over the fire?”

Marshmallows, once big and activated, now relaxed and melted down to the ground. “What’s next?” I asked.

“Chocolate!” they screamed. So we made ourselves into smaller rectangles: again, arms up on either side of head, with wrists cocked and fingers pointing in to make the top edge. Then we bent, doubling at the waist again to lay our Chocolate selves down on the Marshmallow before returning to Graham Cracker. Voila! S’mores! And for us, also, the birth of “improv yoga” – a way to distract, entertain and stretch us all.

These children remind me that a child’s interest, when ignited, is the force that moves the world, or at least makes us giggle. And to giggle is a wonderful thing.

 

Image: Virginia Pike-Russell, via Flickr

Yoga Calm Develops Children into Compassionate Leaders

Here’s a wonderful video of one of Lynea’s students who is now leading
Yoga Calm classes.  Haley is a compassionate and creative teacher who is already creating guided stories with social/emotional lessons – all at age 11!

 

Emotional Regulation: Five Breath Success

“Mrs. Gillen!” exclaimed a fifth grade boy, running up to me as I arrived at school one day this past week. “I have to tell you what happened!”

This student has struggled with attention difficulties yet just recently moved from the behavior classroom to regular education for a major part of the day. Indeed, he’s worked hard on managing his intense feelings – what he calls his “ring of fire.” He describes it as a place he must learn to move through in order to be successful.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I was at my baseball game on Saturday. We were playing in the field behind our school. I was up to bat and the bases were loaded with two out. I had two strikes and it was my last chance to score for our team – and you know what I did?!” He had a huge smile on his face.

“No,” I said, “What did you do?”

“Well,” he continued, “I looked over at the red door to your room, and I thought about the things you tell us. Then I took FIVE DEEP BREATHS. That’s it – just FIVE DEEP BREATHS! And guess what? I slammed the ball and got three players in! That’s all it took – just FIVE DEEP BREATHS.” He stood tall, his chest puffed out a bit. He was absolutely beaming.

I smiled and said, “Thanks for telling me that story. That made my day.”

Yoga, Mediterranean Syle

Italy.

The name conjures up Mediterranean images of rolling hills carpeted with vineyards, ancient architecture, art and culture, fashion, great food and wine – and an art of living all too easily forgotten in our fast-paced world.

 

 

Indeed, the Mediterranean is the historical epicenter of Western culture. But few realize that it’s also the birthplace of many great modern educational traditions including the Montessori method and Italy’s recently discovered Reggio Emilia approach.

Recently, the U.S. Secretary of Education and 250 educators traveled to Reggio Emilia, Italy, to see this wonderful model of early childhood education and learn of its principles. These include:

• Children must have some control over the direction of their learning.
• Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing and hearing.
• Children have relationships with other children and material items in the world that they must be allowed to explore.
• Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.

Yoga Calm’s philosophy mirrors the Reggio Emilia Approach principles and is based on the belief that children want to learn – and are innately motivated to do so – when they feel safe, supported and appropriately stimulated. In this type of environment, children discover and develop their own unique abilities. Their natural beauty and compassion grows. They blossom.

 

 

You can experience the benefits of Yoga Calm firsthand in Casperia, Italy, where we will be holding our first international Yoga Calm training July 30 – August 6.

 

 

In one of the last Italian villages untouched by mass tourism, during the lushness of the Italian summer, we will have the luxury of diving deep into Yoga Calm’s principles of Stillness, Listening, Grounding, Strength and Community. From rooftop yoga decks inspired by views of the Sabina Mountains, we will learn new tools to help children and expand our skills. With restorative yoga practices, we will experience wellness practices that rejuvenate and renew. And with storytelling, inquiry processes and ample time to hike, bike and share with educators from around the world, we will reflect and grow.

We hope that you’ll join us!

Learn more about Yoga Calm in Italy.

Developing Self-Regulation

In our work with children, we are often reminded of just how important it is to learn the skill of self-regulation – especially for children with impulse control weaknesses. As Peter Levine powerfully illustrated at a recent workshop we attended, impulse control is a key child development stage, and impulse disorders go hand-in-hand with ADHD, PTSD, substance use, bipolar spectrum disorders and other issues. Most importantly, he showed how development of the ability to self-regulate requires us to work through the body.

Of course, learning through our bodies is how children initially learn and is a powerful tool for all of us.

At its heart, yoga is about self-regulation. In fact, some of the oldest writings on yoga state that it “is the cessation of the vibrations of the mind.” One way that the yogis did this was through calming the nervous system through breath awareness and breathing techniques. Just taking slow deep breaths has a profound affect on the nervous system, can give us a sense of control and can help with focusing – something we describe in detail in Chapter 4 of Yoga Calm for Children .

In over 35 years of yoga practice, we have found that the Hoberman Sphere is one of the most effective tools for teaching relaxed, diaphragmatic breathing. Watching the sphere’s three-dimensional action combined with “belly breathing” calms, centers and relaxes children and adults alike.

Here is a story from Cameron Denney, a school counselor who used this technique the day after attending an introductory Yoga Calm workshop:

“I used the Hoberman sphere with a third grade class this week. One boy – who has a really tough time with impulsivity/talking out and being quite oppositional – came into class in a bad frame of mind, angry at the boys who chose to sit next to him in the classroom. They were exchanging irritated remarks, and the boy kept saying to me, “Make them move!” I told them all to wait and then started the class by introducing breathing with the sphere. This particular boy was fascinated with the ball (well, truth be told, they all were) and asked if he had a good day, could he play with it?….After the breathing, none of the boys had any problems at all with each other for the whole period. I asked the boy to lead an activity, and he did a great job and looked happier than I’d ever seen him. At the end of the class, he came up to take a turn handling the sphere, and, of course, everyone else did, too, but we had extra time that day, so all was well.”

Another story from Andrea Burke, a school librarian:

“The week after I taught calming breathing in third grade (one lesson), a girl came back to share she had used the calming breathing before her piano recital and it had really helped her. I also keep a Hoberman sphere available to kids in the library. Every class has been taught how it is an aid in regulating breathing and calming oneself. It is used spontaneously everyday by someone.”

Have you used the Hoberman sphere in teaching self-regulation? Use the Comments section to let us know how it worked for you and your students. (The link to comments is above, just below the post’s title, at the end of the list of tags.)

Stories used by permission

Getting Kids Out of Their Heads, Into Their Bodies

For a recent Yoga Calm workshop, school counselor Bonnie Cannon wrote an insightful commentary on her developing awareness of yoga as self-study and how this may benefit the children she works with. We asked if we could share her good words on our blog. We were happy to hear, “Yes.” Thanks, Bonnie!

The primary understanding that I took away from this weekend workshop, which I had not recognized before, was that yoga is self-study.

I had been teaching students poses, facilitating games and guiding discussions designed to elicit understandings and connections on a theoretical level, and the students had been responding positively. But I realized during this workshop that the teaching could be more powerful and more effective by helping students to connect, explore and understand their physical experiences as well.

With that in mind, I will now be asking more experiential questions: “How did that feel?” rather than, “What can we learn from that?” Most students are encouraged to spend an inordinate amount of time in their heads during the school day, and very little attention is paid to what is happening in their bodies. In fact, often they are expected to ignore or suppress what is happening in their bodies.

But our bodies, our feelings, and our thoughts are intricately connected, and students will be most successful if we can provide a balanced educational experience that encourages them to understand what is happening in their bodies, how that affects what they are feeling, how that in turn affects what they are thinking, and how all of that affects their ability to learn and retain information presented in the classroom.

Students are not taught in a vacuum. A student who is experiencing high levels of chronic stress will not be able to attend to, retain and recall information as well as a student who is able to recognize stress in the body and release it.

The self-study focus of yoga and Yoga Calm helps students to better understand and recognize what is happening in their bodies so that they will be able to make decisions and take actions that benefit their bodies and maximize their ability to learn and reach their full potential. This can happen in targeted, direct ways such as learning to recognize when the body is hungry and the effects different foods have on it, and learning to fuel the body for optimum performance. It can also happen in less tangible ways such as experiencing the good feelings that come with giving and receiving a compliment or support during a task, and then continuing to compliment or support others, thereby increasing ones own confidence, self-esteem and serotonin levels, as well as creating a more positive, cooperative learning environment, all of which will ultimately lead to increases in academic performance.”

Read more on this topic here.

Valentine’s Day Advice

Recently, a group of five fifth grade boys in one of my Yoga Calm groups said they had something “really important to talk with me about.” It had “something to do about” their feelings.

Over the course of the year, these boys had gradually opened up about all sorts of things in our groups, from bullying to troubles with parents and siblings. Sometimes they’d cry and, most endearingly, support each other when they cried – something very hard for boys this age to do when peer and social expectations are for them to be tough.

“What’s going on,” I asked them.

They replied that they were “really stressed.” When I asked why, they said, “It’s Valentine’s day.”

“Valentine’s day?” I responded with a bit of surprise.

“Yes, the girls are asking for cards, but we don’t know what to write!” explained one boy. “We don’t know how to do Valentines.”

Trying not to smile or laugh, I asked if some girls were easier to talk to than others, thinking a friendship lesson might be in order. But I knew that wasn’t where we were going as soon as one boy said, “The beautiful ones are harder to talk to.”

“And there are a lot of beautiful girls,” added another.

Maintaining my composure, I asked if I could ask the some girls from the afternoon Yoga Calm class if they had some Valentine’s advice for the boys. “No!” they said emphatically.

“What if it’s done anonymously?” They looked at each other, then gave the O.K.

My girls’ Yoga Calm group met later that day, and during the end-of-session relaxation, I asked if I could ask an important question – one they could answer only by listening to their hearts. I told them that there were some boys who really needed advice on Valentine’s Day. At first, the girls snickered but then gave their answers:

1. Tell the girl how you really feel about her.
2. Don’t ask her to be your Valentine if you don’t know her.
3. Tell her she has nice hair and eyes – girls like to hear that.
4. Don’t use a scrawny voice.
5. Act formal – and do it where no one else can hear.
6. Don’t ask in front of your friends, as this puts pressure on her.
7. Ask her in person instead of a letter.
8. Give a compliment or two, but don’t smother her with them.
9. Don’t ask twice.
10. Say “Be Mine” on the card.

Perhaps, this would be good advice for all, young and old!

It’s Not Just the Pose: Teaching Children’s Yoga

Recently, while getting ready to teach our Physical Connections to Learning workshop (Integrated Approach to Wellness 2), I found myself rereading John Friend’s Anusara Teacher Training Manual. One passage in particular jumped out at me, as it really sums up the qualities that we encourage and nurture in training Yoga Calm instructors to give kids the gift of yoga. I thought I’d share it with you:

One of the most important things I believe about effective yoga teaching is that if the students feel better about themselves psychologically and emotionally at the end of a class, then the teaching was successful.

So, what are the most important skills a teacher must have to effectively help the students bolster their self-esteem and self-love? Is it the amount of teaching experience, technical knowledge, philosophical knowledge, ability to perform the asanas [physical poses], or some intrinsic personality or heart qualities that are most important?

From my own inaugural teaching experience, I realized it is possible for a teacher to have minimal yoga experience or knowledge of postural technique and still be effective in inspiring the students about their greatness. Later in my yoga journey, I found that a teacher with many years of technical training and experience could be uninspiring or dry in their presentation to the students. Furthermore, some very experienced yoga teachers could be discouraging, demeaning, or even cruel to their students. So, a great amount of experience and technical knowledge does not automatically make someone a great yoga teacher.

Through my contemplation I have discovered that the essence of a great yoga teacher is three interpersonal qualities which can be summarized into special categories that I call: soft heart, sharp mind and vibrant body. The teacher’s soft heart quality encompasses compassion, sensitivity to others’ feelings, friendliness, kindness, patience, and respectfulness. Sharp mind includes being articulate, creative, and innovative, while a vibrant body includes being enthusiastic, charismatic, positive, humorous, and inspiring.

These three categories represent the most important qualities of a good yoga teacher—they form the soil where the seeds of technical knowledge and teaching experience can root and grow vigorously, bearing fruit for a lifetime.

- Jim Gillen

How Yoga Can Help Your Child Become Calm, Controlled, Disciplined, and Happier

by Lyn McCallister, via Associated Content

Children can sometimes be unfocused and a bit wild. Sometimes these children cannot concentrate and have a difficult time in school despite being bright and eager to learn. Your child may even have a behavior disorder. Sound familiar? If your child fits this description, it might be because he or she needs a physical outlet to help learn internal calmness and control.

I begin taking yoga in my early 30s in an effort to become more flexible and to help stretch for cardio exercise. After taking yoga classes with an excellent teacher, Jim Gillen, through a work program I learned to have my own inward control. I felt better after class and seemed to be more productive at work. I also slept better.

How Does Yoga Help Children?

Just like yoga helped me as an adult, the same principles of calmness and relaxation can help children. I have a few friends with young children who are enrolled in other, more aggressive forms of exercise. Although the exercise is good and some of the programs are great, not all children benefit from rough-and-tough group sports. Some children will thrive by taking yoga and may become more calm, controlled, and self-disciplined.

Where Can I Find Out More About Children’s Yoga?

I recommend checking out Jim and Lynea Gillen’s program called Yoga Calm. If your child suffers from anxiety problems, ADHD, or other behavior disorders then this system may work for you. They have a book that you can purchase for a home program. Or, better yet, check out their website to see if they will be teaching a workshop near you.

If you live in the Portland, Oregon area, then Jim and Lynea have a studio that you can visit.

If there are multiple children at your child’s school that can benefit, work with the school to see if they can bring a Yoga Calm workshop to your community.

Next, visit several local yoga studios and check out their offerings for children. If the yoga studio doesn’t have a class for children, ask them to become certified instructors in the Yoga Calm method.

Children today often spend way too much time in front of televisions and gaming systems. By offering your child a regular yoga practice schedule, you can help your child overcome many behavior obstacles while becoming healthier. Yoga is for everyone. A good teacher can help you or your child overcome many physical limitations as well as become a more calm and focused individual.