21 Mar 2013
The Light Inside-Teaching Kids About Spirituality
As a yoga teacher, part of my job is guiding my students to find their own light.
How do you teach a young child about spirituality? Children may not understand the concept of a “soul”, but they do understand the idea of a LIGHT inside or the LOVE in their heart.
Over the past few months, my yoga lessons have revolved around finding PEACE inside or how we can express the LOVE in our hearts. The children have been learning how they calm their bodies and their minds through yoga, breathing and meditation. The other day, I asked my classes if they knew why we chant OMs before yoga, and they responded “to find peace”. It’s moments like these that make me love teaching!
Children are always learning…absorbing everything they see, hear and feel.
They relate what they learn to their inner experience. Teaching a child to pay attention to their breath, tune into their feelings, and listen with their heart will help them develop a strong connection to themselves and the world around them. This builds their sense of trust in themselves and self confidence. We may think they are too young to understand but they “get it”.
The greatest lesson you can teach young children is to LISTEN to their inner voice.
It’s not often that children get to just “be” and relax. At the end of every class,they lie down in Savasana or
DO NOTHING DOLL…Nothing to think, Nothing to Do, Doing Nothing is Good for You.
While my students are resting in Savasana, with their eyes closed, I tell them a “story”, a guided visualization where they are lying on a beach or going on a cloud ride in the sky. I ask them if they can try to be so still, so quiet that they can hear the sound of their own breathing. I tell them to breathe in that calm feeling from the top of their heads to their tip toes. It may take weeks or even months before they can lie down without wiggling around or talking, but eventually they can and even enjoy it. I let them know that no matter what, they can find that quiet place inside where they can always go when they are feeling sad or upset.
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I usually end my yoga classes with a soothing song, either Kira Wiley’s Namaste Song or Snatam Kaur’s Longtime Sun. I explain that just like the sun, we each have a LIGHT inside us and to remember to let it SHINE. When I look around our circle and see their blissful faces, I know that they are IN that peaceful place, shining their light!
I leave you with this beautiful blessing. May your own light guide you on your path so that you may find your peace. Namaste.
May the longtime sun
Shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light within you
Guide your way on
~ Celctic Blessing
28 Mar 2013
Listening with Your Heart
Listening is one of the most challenging lessons that educators are faced with when teaching children.
One of the themes we explored this month in my yoga classes was LISTENING. After I introduced the theme, I asked the children to share why listening is so important and where they can listen. Many of them responded that they listen to teachers so they can learn and to their parents when they ask them to do something. We discussed how listening was a great way of helping too. Then I told them that we were going to practice our listening by reading 2 poems and asked them to “put on their listening ears”.
Poetry is such a wonderful resource for teaching.
Children are captivated by the sound of rhyming words and the singsong of your voice as you recite each verse. After reading the first poem, I asked the children to help me with the next “action poem” where I read part of the poem and we pointed to different parts of our bodies and they filled in the missing words.
This is the poem I used:
I listen mostly with my _____ (ears, point to ears)
But I sometimes listen with my _____ (eyes, point to eyes)
I look at your _____ (face, point to face)
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I listen mostly with my ______ (eyes, point to eyes)
That’s a really good place to start
But I learn a lot about you
When I listen with my ______ (heart, point to heart)
Playing listening games is a fun way to teach listening skills.
One was yoga telephone where the children sit in a circle and close their eyes. I placed a small animal puppet in one child’s hands and when they all opened their eyes, that child whispers the name of the animal to the next child and then each child whispers in the next child’s ear until it goes around the circle. Then the last child names the puppet and we all do the yoga pose together. For younger kids, we passed the puppet around the circle and the children had to listen to when the music stopped and the child with the puppet in their hand led the class in that yoga pose.
Most importantly, children learn that listening is not something they only do with their ears, but also with their eyes, their hearts, their whole beings. They understand the importance of listening to their teachers, parents, family and friends as a way to show that they care.
image credit amtbweb.org