Bringing Yoga Into the Classroom to Promote Balanced Health
Yoga in the classroom can be a powerful tool to help students prepare to start their day, cope with stress, focus and have some fun in a calm but interactive way.
Meditation seems really illusive to a lot of people, but it is a practice that can be worked into a five minute routine in the morning or evening. Seated meditation in easy pose is very popular, but you can meditate laying down or standing. Pick
a pose that is most comfortable to you. Center your thoughts on your breathing. Now would be a great time to use a box breathing pattern. Or you can decide to keep an image in your mind (a flower, the beach, a mountain, etc.). Once comfortable with your pose and focus, stay still and imagine yourself under the glow of a white light. Let your mind bring in thoughts and let those thoughts float away. You are now meditating.
Could you see yourself doing any of these things? How could you incorporate them into your classroom routine? If you’re in an early elementary class, could carpet time include resting their hands on their knees and breathing the box breath for a minute before starting their day? How about middle school?
Could you teach a group of kids how to stand properly in Tadasana (mountain pose), therefore helping them with alignment and posture? By high school, we would have students that knew how to breathe deeply before assessments, before getting angry and exploding or before doing a big presentation. They would also know how to stand up tall and confidently.
Currently I run a lunch group yoga session. Anywhere from 2-10 yogis (male yoga enthusiasts) and yoginis show up to stretch and meditate. My current group is really into guided meditation (we’ve been to mountain tops, lakes, a village made up of candy, a waterfall, visited with a rainbow-colored cat and seen unicorns). The group is mostly girls, but they look forward to yoga and have reported that it has helped them stay calm throughout the day. Yoga is a gift that you can give your students as a way to overcome life’s stresses.
Here’s a set of yoga poses that can be practiced individually or grouped together in a flow (Vinyasa). Use them for you or your students. Ideally for both!
“Most people think of yoga and think of complicated poses and stretches that look impossible. It is so much more than a workout for physical fitness.”
Yoga is the really the way the body moves and lengthens through a series of asanas (Sanskrit for poses). Yoga promotes the mind-body connection through movement, breathing and meditation.
In my small group of middle school yoginis (female yoga enthusiasts), one girl summed up breath work very well: “You breathe out longer than your exhale to get rid of more CO2. So, you bring the good in on the inhale and exhale out more of the bad.” Another technique is box breathing. Box breathing is a method of using inhalations and exhalations in a pattern. For example, a 3-3-3-3 breath would be inhale to the count of 3, hold the breath for a count of 3, exhale to the count of 3, hold the breath for a count of 3. Bringing your awareness to your breathing and holding the breath, causes two things to happen:
- the CO2 gets trapped
- the body releases reserves of O2.
More oxygen released into your system creates a calming effect.
