What can be technical elements for a children’s yoga class?
Written by Sophie Nusselder
Every hosted a children’s yoga class? It can be superfun!
In this blog I share a list of “ingredients” – elements that proved to be powerful in children’s yoga classes I hosted the last view years. Hopefully they help you to create inspiring lessons that embody the principles of yoga. Remember 🙂 make the class fun and joyfull, inspired by….LOVE
- Physical body: Introduce all types of yoga postures: forward bends, backbends, twists, hip openers, supine poses, standing poses, inverted poses and balancing poses.
- The senses: Cover the ordinary and non ordinary senses with aromatherapy, massage, music, sound, vibration, food, light, darkness etc.
- History / philosophy: Introduce elements of the yoga philosophy to the students. Include stories about who the postures are named after and why and introduce important deities like Shiva and Shakti. Introduce the eight folded path (Yama, Niyama etc)
- Pranayama Practise different forms of pranayama from day one
- The energy body Yessss! I would really talk about the energetic body, the koshas, chacras, intuition and the web that connects us!
- Meditation Make silence, contemplation, meditation and guided visualization
- Kula – Create a community Create a space, a community (“KULA”) where all children are and feel safe to express themselves openly and confidently .
- Emotional Benefits/ Effects: make the children aware of their emotions, so that they may learn to turn yoga to support their emotional, physical and spiritual life!
Enjoy your teachings 🙂
Let’s end this blog with a lovely poem of Loris Malaguzzi, founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach (translated by Lella Gandini)
The Hundred Languages
No way. The hundred is there.
The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.
A hundred always a hundred
ways of listening
of marveling, of loving
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds
to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.
The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and at Christmas.
They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.
And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.
// Picture: Sophie Nusselder
Address: Parimukti Yoga Center, Kanira Homes,
Girkarwaddo, End of Magic Park Road,
Arambol, 403524,
Goa, India
Phone: +919637521278
Email: info@parimukti.com
Website: http://parimukti.com/
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