March 3, 2014

Re-cap

Today our yoga theme was a South American folktale called Rainbow Birds.  I told the stories of the drab colored birds and how the cockroaches came and started to destroy their beautiful rainbow.  A phoenix came from the heavens imploring the birds in the rainforest to help him fight the cockroaches.  The birds that helped defeat the cockroaches were rewarded by the Phoenix with bright rainbow colored feathers as they flew through the rainbow.  Those who were selfish learned the lesson too late, to help a friend in need.  We added poses to our story and re-told it as we did each pose.  We also painted a picture of South American birds, and completed our practice with a Silence Game Meditation.  Yes….your children were absolutely silent for about 4 minutes! 

Class Highlight:

I had a basket of flowers in the middle of our class today.  One of the boys groaned as he pointed to them.  The other boy said that it’s like his brother told him, even the most violent movies have people kissing in the end!  He was right, we turned into buzzing bumblebees (complete with stingers) and practiced sipping breath, pretending to sip nectar out of the flowers, and beezing, as we buzzed from one flower to the next. 

Practice Pose of the week:

Plow pose [Halasana].  Here is what it will look like when your child does it, and what a grown-up tries to achieve.  The kid version is just fineJ  They  were rolling around and almost doing this pose without even knowing it, so I threw it in and gave them the terminology.  We even talked about the function of a plow.  When the body claims the full expression of the pose, it reflects that of a traditional Indian plow and when practicing this pose, one ploughs the body like one digs the earth, making it loose, free, and open to healing.

Benefits
-calms the mind

-reduces stress

-brings balance to our inner bodies

-actively stretches the spine just by using gravity and body weight

*Reminders:

I will be holding our LAST CLASS next Monday, March 10th, which will be our last class for this session.