may podcast: sydney solis on sparking kids’ imaginations

Educator and children’s book author Sydney Solis speaks to the importance of cultivating the imagination and shares how her yoga and storytelling program engages kids in fun body-based learning, improves language and thinking skills, and enhances self-awareness and self-expression.

May 2010 episode Sparking Kids’ Imaginations, with Sydney Solis (listen now, download, or subscribe).

make this a family summer to remember

Come share special moments together. This summer at Kripalu, we’re offering a variety of programs just for kids—while you’re in your workshop, they are in theirs—as well as a few for families. All led by gifted teachers with years of passion and experience, these workshops give kids a chance to be themselves, have fun, make friends, and do really cool things. You’ll all return home rejuvenated and reconnected.

Take a look at Kripalu’s summer programs for kids and families.

want to bring yoga to kids?

Children are remarkably open to yoga, especially when it’s brought to them in kid-friendly ways. If you are interested in yoga or already have a passion for it, consider an immersion training that prepares you to teach yoga to children. Through learning and practice, you’ll gain the skills you need to get started with confidence. Manuals, CDs, and more are included in the tuition.

Yoga Ed.™ Tools for Classroom Teachers shows classroom teachers how to enhance students’ health, learning, and behavior with four simple yoga tools.

Yoga Ed.™ K–8 Instructor Certification trains yoga teachers in a complete, nationally recognized 36-week yoga curriculum for kids—and for their teachers.

Radiant Child® Yoga Immersion provides you with a deeply loving approach to yoga-inspired tools, tips, and practices for children.

time for kids to jam!

Calling all kids 5 to 14 years old! Come drum, dance, and make art with musician, chef, and dad Adrian Bennett. In this Memorial Day weekend program, kids will learn hand-drumming techniques, create improvisational music, theater, and dance, and put on a show for parents!

Tribal Jam! for Kids

Parents are invited to take part in their own exhilarating dance, drum, and yoga weekend Tribal Jam! Moving with the Rhythm.

reading, writing, ‘rithmetic … and yoga

Reduced test anxiety. Better performance in sports. More “me time.” Kripalu’s Yoga in Schools program has made some dramatic changes in the lives of students at Monument Mountain Regional High School in nearby Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Spearheaded by Kripalu’s Institute for Extraordinary Living (IEL) in partnership with Harvard-affiliated researchers, the program is part of a study of the effects of yoga practice on young people.

Interested in the future of yoga? Watch a video on Yoga in Schools to learn more about this IEL project.

yogic tips for test-taking teens

For most teens, facing the SATs and ACTs is stressful. That’s why, when Kripalu Yoga teacher Brian Leaf wrote two test preparation books for McGraw-Hill, he included sections on meditation and getting present. They both offer teens practical approaches to minimizing stress while improving concentration, test scores, and, Brian says, probably even their social lives.

Read Brian’s test-taking tips.

from the archives: the yoga of parenting

Swami Kripalu said that the spiritual path is “the performance of skillful actions that lead one to the direct realization of truth.” In this piece, writer, mother, and yogini Carrie Owens shares her experience of parenting from a yogic perspective.

Read Carrie’s article, The Yoga of Parenting.

recipes kids love

Any kid can tell you: vegetables taste better when they’re shaped like a pancake, porridge is yummier with a scoop of fruit, and anything (including nuts) benefits from the addition of maple syrup! Musician, chef, and father Adrian Bennett has mealtimes covered.

Recipes Kids Love
Veggie Pancakes
Maple Toasted Nuts
Grain Porridge

desktop wallpaper

Enjoy the beauty of the Berkshires every day with Kripalu’s desktop wallpaper. Available with and without a calendar.

Easy to download.

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Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization whose mission is to teach the art and science of yoga to produce thriving and health in individuals and society.

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welcome

Welcome to the first ever Kids Issue of Kripalu Online. In response to your requests, we’ve pulled together articles, announcements, yummy kid-friendly recipes, and an audio interview about bringing the benefits of yoga to young people. Whether they are small ones still immersed in wonder, a little older and discovering natural and cultural worlds, or teens exploring personal and social identities, yogic practices offer a critical connection to the inner resources that can sustain them for a lifetime. In the meantime, have some fun together!

building a family yoga practice

by Carol Greenhouse

Ever thought about doing yoga with your kids? In addition to family meals and bedtime rituals, more and more families are adding yoga to their daily routines. Writer Carol Greenhouse shares her family’s experience and gets advice from master teachers on how to make yoga an experience kids and parents can enjoy together. Turns out Downward Dog comes in all sizes!

The first time my daughter, Zoe, and I rolled out our mats in front of Family Yoga, a DVD that features renowned yoga teacher Rodney Yee; his ex-wife, Donna Fone; and their kids, I expected my 6-year-old’s attention to wander. But 40 minutes later, as we relaxed in Savasana, her question revealed the shape of things to come: “Can we do this every day?”

Sure enough, six months later, Zoe and I are on our way to a shared practice that juices our bodies, our souls, and our relationship. And we’re not alone. Family yoga is taking off as parents discover the pleasures of practicing alongside their toddlers, pre-teens, and teens.

If you have yet to establish a home practice with your kids, the benefits might surprise you. “Family yoga can become a way of life,” says Amy Gabrielle Witmyer, owner of the Sacred Space Yoga and Wellness Center of West Orange, New Jersey, who has been practicing with her husband and their son, Juaquin, since the 9-year-old was in utero. These days, Juaquin assists in his mother’s classes and has his own daily practice. “Sometimes we find the three of us are just lying on the floor of the studio, talking, stretching, doing poses separately and together,” Witmyer says. “Maybe I’m doing vinyasa, I have my son hanging upside down, and my husband’s meditating. It brings a nice feeling of family time. And all of a sudden, my son tells us some story, he just opens up, because the opportunity is there.”

The rewards of a family practice are long-lasting, including not only well-documented benefits like increased concentration, muscle tone, and school performance, but also stronger bonds among family members and better social skills in the world at large. “If you have a good practice,” says Yee, “you can’t help but take it off the mat.”

So how do you begin? That depends on your family. “Something can evolve differently every day. You don’t need to think, “This is the way a family yoga practice looks,’” says Yee. Instead, just set aside time and vary the menu enough to keep everyone’s interest. “It can be like, ‘Today, we’re going to put on Yoga for Beginners; tomorrow maybe we’re going to look at each other and do yoga poses. On Wednesday we’re going to do the primary series in Ashtanga all together. Thursday we’re going to do pranayama.’”

Kelly Campbell, who teaches yoga in Santa Monica, California, and practices with her husband and 4-year-old son, Everett, says the discipline has unquestionably enriched their lives. “We have a common language and way of moving that we can tap into,” Campbell says. “It isn’t rigid or set up in a dogmatic way; it’s just how we flow together as a family.” One example: when Everett is upset or hurt, his parents will ask him to find his yoga breath. “Many times,” says Campbell, “that is what will calm him down.”

Brett Avelin, a yoga instructor in Putney, Vermont, who practiced with his wife for hours each morning before the birth of their 2-year-old son, points out that creating the space and time to be present with one another as a family can be a sizable challenge. But he’s already looking at the other side of the balance sheet. “As kids age, they get into so many different things,” he says. “Maybe you can’t do football games or gymnastics meets alongside them, but you can share yoga with them as they grow up.” Otherwise, he points out, “How much of what we do is really together, rather than sitting together watching TV or playing video games?”

That brings up a key question: How can yoga compete against other enticements for children’s attention? How do we keep from having to insist our kids practice with us? The answer, veterans agree, is modeling. In the words of Laurice Nemetz, owner of the Wellness Bridge studio in Westchester County, New York, and mother of 8- and 11-year-old boys who practice with her: “For adults, we always say ‘Live your practice.’ That’s very much the same when you have kids. Modeling is the biggest way kids learn, both on the mat and off.” So if you’re charged up about unrolling your mat, it’s likely your children will be charged up about it, too, at least some of the time.

And if your own routine has faltered, says Yee, start there. “Practice yourself. Then yoga becomes part of the furniture for the kids. When the household is studying something deeply, the walls are vibrating with that knowledge. So whenever people begin to practice yoga, all the people in the household are going to absorb some of that.”

What if you’ve never had a home practice? It's never too late to start, says Rajashree Choudhury, five-time winner of the All-India Yoga Championship and wife of the founder of Bikram Yoga. In fact, some children will thrive on getting the moves down ahead of their parents. Don’t let it hold you back. Begin wherever you are.

“What we see as teachers all the time is that it’s too serious,” says Yee. “When did we lose that playfulness kids have, which is one of the main ingredients to learning?” Take it back, he says. “Make it playful. Let the kids climb on you; hoist them up into handstands. Don’t set it up in such a way that they have to get it ‘right.’”

In other words, let the practice itself be perfection enough. “I was always afraid my son wouldn’t like yoga if I forced him to do it,” Witmyer says. “So I’m really hands-off. His practice isn’t ‘perfect’ but I don’t correct him too much, because I don’t want to stifle the joy he has for yoga.”

Six months after our first Savasana, Zoe and I are expanding our repertoire with Yoga Journal’s Yoga Step by Step DVD series about building a home practice. We’ve done Sun Salutations on mountaintops, and Zoe has taken classes with friends and loves to attend the otherwise adults-only Wednesday-night session in our town. The latest development? She wants us to film our own family yoga video. That should keep us busy—and practicing—for a while.

“Yoga is just a tool,” says Yee. “But it can become the axis on which a family rotates.”

A longtime member of the Ode Magazine editorial team and former Outside Magazine staffer, Carol Greenhouse has written about everything from children’s meditation to BASE parachute jumping in Malaysia to conceiving her daughter as a single parent. She lives in Vermont, where she works to keep her own home yoga practice alive.

spreading the word…

Healthy Lifestyles for High School Students
The Vermont Institute on Health and Wellness is a summer experience for high school students that provides a weeklong residential immersion in making healthy lifestyle choices and living well. Also designed for students interested in careers in health and wellness, the institute is a nonprofit organization run by a graduate of Kripalu’s Semester Intensive, Jeff Mandell.

Check it out at www.vihw.org (and send the link to any high-schoolers you know who might be interested!).

Laughter Yoga
According to Laughter Yoga International, a global movement for health, joy, and world peace, anyone can laugh for no reason—it’s contagious and it’s good for you! Laughter Yoga combines pranayama (yogic breathing) with laughter, reducing stress hormones and strengthening the immune system.

Find out more about Laughter Yoga and watch videos of schoolchildren and kids with special needs enjoying the practice.

Help Yoga Teachers Help Kids
Kripalu's Rachel Greene Memorial Fund, established in memory of yoga teacher Rachel Greene, offers scholarships to yoga teachers and elementary school classroom teachers for trainings on taking yoga into disadvantaged public schools. Through its sister program, Teaching for Diversity, yoga teachers are awarded grants to bring yoga to underserved populations, including inner-city children and teenage mothers.

Donate to the Rachel Greene Memorial Fund and the Teaching for Diversity program.

quote of the month

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.
—Rachel Carson, American marine biologist and nature writer

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Corrections We make every effort to ensure the accuracy of our information; however, errors do occasionally occur.