Yoga with a Nature Twist

I recently read a very interesting book Last Child in the Woods:  Saving our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv.  He writes:

“Yet, at the very moment that the bond is breaking between the young and the natural world, a growing body of research links our mental, physical, and spiritual health directly to our association to nature – in positive ways.  Several of these studies suggest that thoughtful exposure of  youngsters to nature can even be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorders and other maladies.  As one scientist puts it, we can now assume that just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature.”

This book started me thinking about how our children today interact with nature.  It is rare that children have the opportunity to play free in the woods with their friends.  It is rare that children are taught the names and purposes of local vegetation.  Children sometimes even lack that awareness that the food we buy from the grocery store comes from the earth.

Children today tend to play in organized activities or be attached to the screen (television, computer, gaming, and handheld devices).  The dichotomy of these two activities leaves little time for unstructured play where children can use their imagination, creativity, and test out social skills of compromise, forgiveness, and team work.  Now couple this thought with the lack of time and interest of children to interact with nature.   Simple things like taking a walk in the woods, tending a home garden, building a fort in the woods, and scrambling over rocks are happening less and less.

Richard Louv believes that the lack of connection between children and nature is leading to more learning disabilities and discontentment of the spirit in children.

While I read this book I began to think about how nature interfaces with yoga.  Like the quote mention above, yoga links the body, mind and spirit.  There are also a lot of yoga poses that are names after objects in nature – tree, mountain, snake, dog, lion, river  to name a few.  The Ashtanga practice describes its philosophy with the metaphor of the Eight Limbs of Yoga (with a visual of tree limbs).

The marriage of nature with yoga.  What could be better for a youngster than to incorporate a deep connection of yoga with nature?  Several times now in my class I have held “Yoga off the Mat” classes.  This means we leave behind the yoga poses on a yoga mat in a classroom and practice yoga outside!  This is especially fun on a beautiful day.  We practice mindful walking through rustling leaves in the fall, balance walking on a fallen log, meditating while listening to the sounds of the woods, mindful walking while closing our eyes and using our other senses, and mimicking the trees in the woods with our tree pose.    These are just a few activities that can marry the yoga with nature.  I believe that this combination allows children to deepen their connection inward and therefore feel more peace, self contentment, and harmony with themselves.

The Value of Non-Competitive Kids Yoga

8 Ways to see the true value of Non-Competitive Kids Yoga

1.  Kids love yoga!  Getting physical can be embarrassing for kids who are out of shape or uncoordinated, and there are too many kids out of shape these days for obstacles like embarrassment.  The thought of gasping and tripping your way to learning to take a shot or play defense discourages many kids from even starting a team sport.  In yoga, the learning curve is more private and personal.  It’s easier to get started and you continue at your own pace.  Kids may not want to join a team, but kids love yoga!

2. Big Value:  Affordable for any school/daycare/family:
Competitive sports need equipment, referees, a team of players and another team to play against.  Many sports are just plain expensive.  Yoga is a great value, all you need is some open space – all the other props in yoga are really just extras.  After kids take yoga, parents often witness them downward dogging or meditating on the living room floor or in their bed – that’s something that you won’t find a hockey player doing.

3. It’s never been easier to get kids active:  In competitive sports only a few people make a team and rest are spectators. In yoga everyone participates, there are no spectators!

4. The foundation for a lifetime of health:  Many kids who are athletes in school find a void once they finish school  Most eventually stop playing sports which means they stop exercising.  Yoga is a lifelong practice that grows with you as you grow older.

5. Learn to relax with yoga:  In the end, competitive sports are a win/lose proposition, that’s why we keep score and stats.  One side wins and one side loses. In yoga everyone feels like a winner after practicing.

6. Perfect for Beginners:  For an out of shape child, exercise hurts physically.  Stretching hurts, running hurts, lifting hurts – you get the idea.  Yes, yoga will also hurt for a newbie too.  But yoga allows people to go at their own pace more easily than competitive sports.  Five minutes on the basketball court is a horror for someone out of shape.  In yoga, the individual can determine the intensity of their effort.  Five minutes of yoga is different for each person because there is no group expectation.  Working at your own pace makes exercise a more enjoyable experience which may keep kids exercising!

7.  Kid-Friendly tools for success:  Balance, coordination, and focus carry off the court and the yoga mat.  These skills can be derived from sports, but they are learned directly from yoga.  In fact may athletes use yoga and mediation to help them control stress and anxiety and to visualize success.  If you do yoga, you learn skills to use in real life.

8. Help children deal effectively with stress:  Life is a battlefield, just read the Bhagavad Gita.  We all need to find our inner compass, our inner Guru, to guide us through battle.  Sports build us to be tough competitors.  Yoga helps us decide what team to play for.

List Created by Young Yoga Masters (www.youngyogamasters.com)

A Natural Approach for Learning Disabilities

I recently attended a very interesting workshop on Brain Gym.  This taught me more about how movement can activate the brain with more cerebral fluid.  This brain fluid is necessary to think, stay awake, and be attentive.  Yoga includes many Brain Gym like exercises, which is why yoga is also helpful for children with ADHD and Executive  Functioning Disorders to name just a few learning disabilities.  In simple terms  inactivity is linked to learning disabilities according to Carla Hannaford, PhD.  Click here to see a interview of Dr Hannaford on Channel 4 News.

Living in A Material World

Deepak Chopra writes:

“Many people assume without question that success is essentially material, that it can be measured in money; prestige, or an abundance of possessions.  These can certainly play a role, but having such things is no guarantee of success.  The success we want our children to achieve has to be defined in many non-material ways as well.  It should include the ability to love and have compassion, the capacity to feel joy and spread it to others, the security of knowing that one’s life serves a purpose, and finally, a sense of connection to the creative power of the universe.  All of these constitute the spiritual dimension of success, the dimension that brings inner fulfillment.”

I, Meg believe that there is more to life than the material world.  With an inner balance of mind, body, and soul; harmony and happiness is easier to feel.  We can practice mindfulness in simple ways like noticing our breath as we drive in the car or trying out a yoga class.

Today’s Day

I am reading a wonderful book A Pebble for Your Pocket by Thich Nhat Hanh.  I want to share with you one part of the book.  Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk, describes something that a young child spoke.

“There is New Year’s Day, Peace Day, Earth Day.  Why not declare today as “Today’s Day”?  On this day, Today’s Day, we don’t think about yesterday, we don’t think about tomorrow, we only think about today.  Today’s Day is when we live happily in the present moment.  When we eat, we know that we are eating.  When we drink water, we are aware that it is water we are drinking.  When we walk, we really enjoy each step.  When we play, we are really present in our play.”

This excerpt of the book is about living in the  moment.  Living this way is practicing mindfulness.  With mindfulness we can nurture our awareness and clarity.  It helps us to calm our minds and nurture our soul.  Life doesn’t have to feel overly stressful if we live more in the moment, solving things one at a time as they come up.

Even our children in today’s society can feel a great amount of stress about test performance, too much homework, and every being overly scheduled with after school activities.  I believe that it is important to teach our children to take a few breaths and enjoy the moment.  Live life like today is the most wonderful day.  Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Remember to PLAY!

Last fall I read a book play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown.  I found it an inspiring book!  Ever since, I have consciously included more play time in my yoga classes.  Play time in yoga can be chaotic, noisy, very fun and healthy for brain development.

“Ultimately, this book is about understanding the role of play and using it to find and express our core truths.  It is about learning to harness a force that has been built into us through millions of years of evolution, a force that allows us to both discover our most essential selves and enlarge our world.  We are designed to find fulfillment and creative growth through play.”

According to this book play can help kids with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
“Once kids enter school, the importance of free play doesn’t end.  All of the patterns that induce states of play are present and remain important for growth, flexibility, and learning.  Unfortunately, we often forget this or choose not to focus on play’s necessity under intense pressure to succeed.  No Child Left Behind is a perfect example.  While it is an admirable (and even necessary) goal to make sure that all children attain a certain minimal level of education, the result has often been a system in which students are provided a rote, skills-and-drills approach to education and “nonessential” subjects like art and music are cut.  In many school districts, even recess and physical education have been severely reduced or eliminated.
The neuroscience of play has shown that this is the wrong approach, especially considering that students today will face work that requires much more initiative and creativity than the rote work this educational approach was designed to prepare them for.  In a sense, they are being prepared for twentieth-century work, assembly-line work, in which workers don’t have to be creative or smart – they just have to be able to put their assigned bolt in the assigned hole.
In fact, Jaak Panksepp suggests that depriving young animals of play might delay or disrupt brain maturation.  In particular, his research shows that play reduces the impulsivity normally seen in rats with damage to their brains’ frontal lobe – a type of damage thought to model human attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) because it affects executive functions such as self-control.  Panksepp has also performed research studies on normal rats, comparing the brains of those that have just had a major play session with the brains of those deprived of it.  In both settings, he and his student Nikki Gordon have found evidence that play increase ene expression in the frontal lobe for brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BNDF), a protein thought to be involved with brain maturation.  Without play, Panksepp suggests, optimal learning, normal social functioning, self control, and other executive functions may not mature properly.
This research has led him to propose a connection between a lack of rough-and-tumble play and ADHD.  In fact, based on their findings that “abundant access to rough-and-tumble play” reduces the inappropriate hyperplayfulness and impulsivity of rats with frontal lobe damage, he and his colleauges propose that a regimen of social boisterous play might be one way to help cuildren with mild to moderate ADHD control impulsivity (and it also is good for those not necessarily prone to ADHD).

Therefore YOGA is a great way for children to move and express their playfulness while assisting in healthy brain maturation!

What more could a parent ask for?

As yoga becomes more mainstream in our culture, there is more clinical research being done about the effects of yoga and children.  It is very positive!  Below is a quote from the recent edition of Yoga Journal.

According to Harvard neuroscientist and yoga researcher Sat Bir Khalsa, yoga trial findings are important because new research shows that the majority of clinically significant indicators of mental health originate in adolescence, and most of those problems are related to stress.

Khalsa feels if these techniques were taught at an earlier age, we’d see fewer instances of lifestyle-related diseases like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.  “Yoga practices,” he says, “are an effective form of preventative medicine, because they enhance stress resilience and foster mind-body awareness, which lead to positive lifestlye choices.”  What more could a parent ask for?

Excerpt from an article found in Yoga Journal October 2010 Teach your Children Well pg 76