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First time isn’t always a charm, but failures often bring blessings in their wake.
For instance, the first time we offered a training in Colorado, low enrollment forced us to cancel. But one who had registered offered to help us try again. An occupational therapist (OT) in the Littleton Public Schools, Ilga Paul helped make our second try into a big success.
What’s more, she’s since become a Certified Yoga Calm Instructor and trainer, and she’ll be teaching our next two Denver workshops: Integrated Approach to Wellness 1 with Kim Oliva, September 17 – 18; and Integrated Approach to Wellness 2 – Physical Connections to Learning with Jim Gillen, September 24 – 25.
Ilga first began sharing yoga with students several years ago, after learning that her OT intern also practiced. “We were working with a group of 2nd graders who all needed help with developing fine motor skills,” she says, “especially as it related to legible handwriting. The students also had very poor muscle tone, decreased core muscle strength and difficulty paying attention. We worked with them outside of the general education classroom, starting our sessions with poses such as Tree, Downward Dog and Cat/Cow. The students loved it!”
After she began working at a school where special education services were provided within the general education classroom, Ilga’s use of yoga expanded. There, she says, “I had a Kindergartener on my caseload and was asked by his teacher to collaborate on a 30 minute weekly session with the whole class. One thing led to another, and soon I was visiting many classes, teaching poses and breath work to support their academic effort, concentration and ownership of their learning.”
As soon as she began learning Yoga Calm’s principles and activities, Ilga put her new knowledge to work. At the time, she says,
my caseload was such that I served students at five schools (Pre – 5) and supervised three OT Assistants. At the same time, word spread of my 10 – 15 minute yoga sessions. At one point, I was going into 19 classrooms a week!
I saw amazing benefits from even this little bit of time and came to realize that Yoga Calm was the most meaningful and results-producing approach I had used in my 35+ years as an OT. Becoming a Certified Instructor seemed like the natural extension of what I had been doing, and now it’s opened the door to a new career! Some things are just meant to happen.
Using Yoga Calm in the classroom is a wonderful way to provide Response to Intervention support, particularly for students who struggle with attention or are highly restless or anxious. Kids love these short “yoga breaks” and get excited when I arrive. I stand quietly at their classroom door and watch the transition process, as that tells me how to structure the session.
One day, I silently walked into a 3rd grade classroom while the teacher instructed the kids to put away their math activities. When the students saw me, without any further instruction, they put away their things, pushed in their chairs, found their personal space and were ready for yoga. It’s so wonderful – and fun and exciting! – to see students go from being silly, distracted and restless to focused, able to complete activities with attention and intention. When a whole class is calm and focused during an activity such as Roots, the energy feels almost magical!
I regularly see students use yoga on their own to help them self-regulate. I have seen 3rd graders with significant anger issues use Belly Breathing to de-escalate. I have seen others use poses such as Chair Twist and seated Forward Bend during standardized testing to help them attend to their task.
The power of Yoga Calm, I believe, comes from students becoming aware of the messages their body is giving them, knowing what to do with those messages and implementing strategies to maximize academic achievement. I find it extremely well-suited to help manage anxiety and distraction. The physical yoga is a wonderful way to work on things like posture, core muscle strength and awareness of the body in space. Students on the Autism Spectrum definitely benefit from the activities, yet even those with more profound needs may benefit in a small group outside of the general education classroom.
In practice, I use a problem-solving approach in which students participate in developing strategies and are responsible for trying them out between sessions. They then report the strategies’ success or failure, and we determine the next steps. The sense of empowerment-in-action is amazing!
And all students can become so empowered, not just those designated with special needs, even though the special needs student was why I went into the classroom in the first place.
I believe that students with almost any dis/ability can benefit from Yoga Calm, in part due to its sheer adaptability to student and class needs. If needed, sessions can be shortened: Better a successful 15 minute session than a disjointed 30 minutes. If you have a group with mixed physical abilities, chairs or bolsters can be used to provide extra balance support. Completing yoga poses with Deaf and hard of hearing populations is a great way to improve vestibular functioning. (Having Deaf students lead poses also gives them an opportunity to practice oral skills.) With blind students, I stand nearby and mindfully use clear, specific and descriptive words in my directions. Often, a sighted student can be paired with a blind student, so they can help position them.
I love watching students change over the course of the school year, and it is so exciting when they independently use strategies that I have taught! I also love watching the teachers. Their class interactions evolve, and they, too, receive the benefits of yoga. Every day, I see the seed Yoga Calm spread and grow. It’s exciting to be able share strategies that really work!
Our next Denver workshops will be held September 17 – 18 (Wellness 1) and September 24 – 25 (Wellness 2). To register online, just click the appropriate date.
Trainings are also slated for January and March 2012, including courses needed for Certification. To see our full schedule of courses around the US, visit us at yogacalm.org.
Earlier this spring, we told you about an exciting new study showing the benefits of social-emotional learning programs like Yoga Calm on academic achievement. The very day we posted it, we got an email from Wendy Holley-Boen, a school psychologist here in Oregon who began using Yoga Calm with students late last year and wanted to update us on outcomes.
One of the schools is in LaPine, and we had a kindergarten class come in with very few school-readiness skills and lots of inappropriate behavior. They had taken their DIBELS [Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills] test early in the fall, and across the board they knew zero letters, zero sounds. Since November, the class teacher and I have co-taught Yoga Calm once a week: I do lessons for half an hour each Tuesday, and she incorporates what I’ve taught all day, every day for the rest of the week.
We just finished DIBELS for the winter term, and this kindergarten had THE MOST GROWTH in the entire Bend-LaPine School District!!! We attribute their increased focus, sense of community and growth to our weekly groups.
So…now people are starting to take us seriously
As well they should!
Congratulations to you, Wendy, and to the class teacher for such an outstanding accomplishment! Here’s hoping that more teachers and staff in your district begin to use Yoga Calm to give these kids such a wonderful academic start.
Have a Yoga Calm success story you’d like to share? Leave it in the comments – or email us at info@yogacalm.org.
Image by woodleywonderworks, via Flickr
We were thrilled to get the news last fall that one of our Certified Yoga Calm Instructors, Rochelle Gladu Patten, MEd, had been named Minnesota Middle School Teacher of the Year by the Minnesota Alliance of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (MNAHPERD).
A Physical Education Specialist at Susan B. Anthony Middle School in Minneapolis, Rochelle has been a key player in the success of the district-wide implementation of Yoga Calm over the past couple years.
We’re very proud of her accomplishment and thought you might like to learn more about this top teacher’s use of Yoga Calm in the classroom – especially how it’s been received by kids and parents, and how its blend of social/emotional games and physical yoga provide extra help for kids as they navigate the challenging transitional years from childhood to the teen years. So we asked her to share. Here’s what she had to say.
I started practicing yoga four years ago at Lifetime Fitness center in Highland Park, a neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Kathy Flaminio was my instructor, and she encouraged me to take the Yoga Calm classes offered by our school district (Minneapolis Public Schools). After one session I was hooked and knew this could make a difference not only for me but my students as well.
Kathy’s support was a major factor in my becoming a Certified Instructor. She convinced me that I could provide these wonderful tools for my students, which I have been doing for about two years now, consistently thrilled to see how much they enjoy the yoga. I know they understand the connection between the breathing and the body. Teaching them to listen, be grounded and feel the support of their community has made a big difference in how they feel about themselves. Emotional development is so important at this age, with hormones raging and all the self-doubt they endure. Yoga Calm practice supports students, and they learn to believe the feelings they have are normal and that the community will provide for them. I know my students have learned how to calm themselves, become better test takers, focus and de-escalate when in crisis. Students have shared how knowing their inner voice has helped them.
I feel my students benefit from listening and connecting with their breathing while settling into their poses and feeling their inner strength. We ride the breath and spend time letting go all that it takes to come to the mat and be in the present moment. I remind them that this is about them – their favorite subject – and that the word “yoga” means to unite and connect. When we have to cancel a class because of a school function, the students are disappointed.
In the Minneapolis Star Tribune last year, there was an article about yoga in the schools. Our school – Susan B. Anthony – was highlighted because a parent had told the reporter about us. Parents are thrilled that we practice yoga! They’ve told me time and again that they think it is the best for their students.
We are proud at Anthony of our inclusion model, working with the adapted physical education program and the sixth grade students in yoga practice and other activities. I work toward teaching my students the intangibles of positive self- esteem, connection, compassion and support of one another and the classroom community.
My hope for them is that they will be able to make a difference in the lives of others if they understand who they are and how they are part of a community.
Yoga Calm works well in Physical Education Classes in middle school. Try it and watch how kids grow as a result of their personal connection. Teach poses, go slow, use the worksheets, calm music, mats, scents – it all adds to the experience. Go for it!
Congratulations, Rochelle, on your impressive achievement! Keep doing the great work you’re doing!
For more information on how you can become a Certified Yoga Calm Instructor, please see our Certification info page.
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, there are plenty of answers to this, depending on a school’s specific situation and needs. Perhaps classroom-based yoga is being pursued as a way of retaining physical education in light of budget cuts or increasing academic mandates. Maybe it’s being considered as a tool for character education or social skills building, or as a component of health education. Maybe the emphasis is on providing supports for learning preparedness and stress reduction. Regardless of the specific situation, there is a wealth of evidence showing measurable, demonstrable benefits to children in multiple areas, including physical fitness, academic achievement and psychological development.
cole24/Flickr
But one needn’t cite just the scholarly literature. There are plenty of real world examples that show a key role for yoga in the lives of all of our youth, especially at school.
Consider Portland’s K-8 Lent School, which was recently featured in the Oregonian, due to its being named one of 15 Celebrating Student Success Champion Schools for 2010 by the Oregon Department of Education. What makes this achievement so remarkable? As the Oregonian reports, “More than 85 percent of the students are poor; more than one-third speak English as their second language; most come from families who struggle at times to scrape together food, clothing and rent.” Despite these real challenges, innovations at the school have created a learning environment in which 82 percent of 5th graders passed the state reading test and all passed in math – “a record that far outpaces similar high-poverty schools.”
While this success can’t be pinned on any one factor alone, yoga has played a role.
In every grade at Lent, students’ days are packed with reading, writing and math – as much as an hour or more of each of those subjects each day. Most eighth graders, even those strongest in math, take two periods of math each day. Fifth-graders can spend three hours a day on reading and writing.
But the school also engages students in hands-on science from the earliest grades. And every elementary student gets art lessons, drama or music class and library time with a specialist each week. Some even have regular yoga lessons to help them relax and feel successful.
RN Colleen Fleming, one of our Certified Yoga Calm Instructors, teaches weekly yoga classes at two Portland elementary schools, including Lent. Recently, she shared a letter with us that she had written to her supervisor and the head of Health and Social Services describing her use of Yoga Calm in the classroom. With her permission, we share the following excerpt, showing how programs like Yoga Calm can indeed make a very big difference in the lives of students and educators alike.
The students see me in the hallway and ask excitedly if I am coming to their class and when I say yes, they are so excited – about yoga, not just me. I have had first graders stop in my office after school to share how much they feel that yoga is helping them and that they are teaching some techniques to their families. The principal at Lent came to me and told me that another first grader was having anger problems on the playground and ended up in the office. When the principal asked him how he could make a better choice for next time, and how he could calm himself down, the boy responded by saying, “I could do belly breathing that I learned in yoga – that helps me to feel better,” and then proceeded to share it with the principal. Teachers share with me that they love the weekly class, and that the class is focused and ready for learning at the end of yoga, and that they use some of the techniques of Yoga Calm to transition the class throughout the week. Bringing yoga to the classroom has also affected my relationship with the staff of my schools. It is creating a much more collaborative environment, and I love feeling like I am a part of the school community.
Beyond the physical experience of doing yoga poses, we talk about health a lot in the yoga class. The need for better sleep, good diets, exercise, stress management and making healthy choices are all talked about, as are things that the students bring up. Yoga is teaching them to notice how they are feeling, to be in touch with their bodies and emotions, and to calm themselves when needed, as well as it is building muscle and strength and bettering balance. It is offering them a coping mechanism that is free and can be carried with them throughout their life. For example, students learn to take deep breaths before a test and also learn why it is helping them to feel better. Or a child with a stomachache comes to my office, and we talk and do some belly breathing, and they say, “I am feeling better and ready to go back to class.” I am passionate about it and feel like it can help with physical and mental health immensely.
Bravo, Colleen! We need more nurses like you – and teachers, administrators and staff like those at Lent and other schools that have added yoga to their curricula – to keep on helping and making such an important difference in the world.
We recently ran across an interesting blog post by a mother who grew concerned when her daughter told of her class doing yoga at school – “not because I was opposed to the movement,” she writes, but because the particular practice involved activities that she considered “meditation.”
As I brushed her hair, unsnarling the tangles within it, I had an important conversation with Elisabeth. I let her know that I felt uncomfortable with this kind of yoga….that it began as a form of worship to another god, and that we are not to be emptying our minds or allowing others to tell us what to meditate upon, rather, we are to fill it with things of the Lord. I fully understand that we are in the public school and cannot expect them to cater to our beliefs, so as a family, we needed to problem-solve as to how we would respond. This was a time that we would need to draw a line and make a stand for our daughter and our faith. Together, we discussed the options….
While the daughter chose an option that included meditation on Bible verses during the meditation time, this ended up being unnecessary after the parent and teacher spoke together and came to an agreement that seems positive for all concerned:
Elisabeth’s teacher is a kind, young, wonderful woman. And as I laid out our dilemma before her, I told her that as a family, we try to stay away from yoga or anything that would ask us to think about spirituality in a way that is not in line with our faith. In that moment, she stopped me and apologized for not having thought the implications through. Would I rather it not be called yoga? With a smile hidden by the phone’s receiver, I replied that it wasn’t the name, or the movement that bothered me, it was the meditation. She completely understood and explained that because PE had been reduced this year, she needed these wiggly children to have some additional movement in the classroom. One of the moms happened to teach yoga, and volunteered her time to lead it. What the teacher had originally wanted for the children was the stretching. What had been brought in was the meditation as well.
I explained that I understood completely, and that I agreed that the children needed the additional exercise. However, as long as the meditation was involved, we would need to find another alternative for Elisabeth. I spelled out the options, making it clear that I didn’t want to disrupt the classroom in any way. After asking her opinion about which approach would be best, she said that she didn’t want Elisabeth to feel excluded or singled out. Her suggestion? She would talk to the mom and ask that all meditation be removed and that the exercise would be limited to the stretching. “Would you and Elisabeth be okay with that?”, she asked. Would we? You betcha! She promised to monitor the situation and that she expected Elisabeth to communicate with her if it ever crossed a line that she felt uncomfortable with.
We quote this at length for a couple of reasons. For one, this is one of the most thoughtful posts we’ve yet run across on the Christian objection to yoga and provides a reasonable and rational model for making those objections known. We commend the mother for taking those concerns to the teacher – and the teacher for working with the mother to ensure that the practice of yoga in the classroom in no way infringed on anyone’s personal faith or spiritual practice.
The post also highlights why, in developing Yoga Calm, it was so important for us to make it a wholly secular program. It uses no Sanskrit, meditation, chanting or religious concepts. Children are never asked to empty their minds or to think or say anything other than, “I am strong; I am in control; I can do it; I can be responsible.” Consequently, in our seven years of teaching it to children and with nearly one thousand teachers currently using Yoga Calm in public schools, we have had very few instances of teachers, staff, administrators or parents objecting to its use.
Of course, yoga, in and of itself, is not a religion. This confusion arose in our culture because Yoga evolved over thousands of years in the context of the spiritual and religious traditions of India. The practices of Yoga were appropriated into most of the different religious traditions of the East. When these teachings were first transmitted in the West, they were often taught by teachers who were also practicing one of the many forms of Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism. The pure teachings of Yoga were therefore often mixed with the cultural and religious associations of the particular teacher.
Over the years, new styles were developed and added so that today, 17 million Americans currently use some form of it in a wide variety of settings, from professional sports programs to health clubs, hospitals to churches and synagogues. Indeed, there are many expressly Christian adaptations of yoga. For instance, Catholic priest and certified Kripalu yoga teacher Father Thomas Ryan has a number of books and DVDs on the subject, including Reclaiming the Body in Christian Spirituality and Let Your Body Be Your Prayer. Many other books likewise teach a Christ-centered yoga, including titles such as Yoga for Christians, Holy Yoga: Exercise for the Christian Body and Soul and Invitation to Christian Yoga.
Nor are school-based yoga programs restricted to public schools but can be found in places like Aurora, Colorado’s Regis Jesuit High School. As a feature in the Denver Post put it earlier this year,
How does yoga…fit into the curriculum at a Catholic prep school?
“Ultimately, it goes back to the definition of yoga, which is unification, yoking of body/mind. That has everything to do with the Jesuit idea of Cura personalis (care of the individual),” said Missy Johnson, the school’s World Language department chair and one of two yoga teachers.
Regis boys in grades 9 through 12 do not chant, but they do meditate.
“Over the four years I’ve taught yoga at the school, only a couple of parents have been concerned – especially about the meditation aspect,” Johnson said. “I remind them that meditation was important to St. Ignatius (of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order) and other Catholic mystics.”
Indeed, when schools are looking at adding any new activity, a key consideration is to determine its appropriateness, not just lump it into a category because of its name or to disqualify it because something like it once was used in a religious context. In fact, if one-time spiritual or religious practice were the criterion for disallowing an activity in public schools, we would have to stop activities such as choir, lacrosse and character education programs. Even writing classes would have to be banned, for they have their roots back in the day when only monks were taught to write so they could transcribe bible and hymn verses.
Thus, when the religious issue comes up, we invite administrators, teachers, parents and other interested parties to review Yoga Calm thoroughly, considering it on its own merits and proven benefits to children.
Learn more at yogacalm.org.
