Teaching kids’ yoga sounds like a lot of fun—and it is
fun! The reason for a comprehensive
kids’ yoga training is that it’s not easy, and there’s much more to it than
entertaining kids for an hour.
It’s my goal to introduce children to yogic practices and
concepts (like being relaxed in the body while maintaining an alert mind), not
just yoga poses. The truth is, all
children really need is lots of time for free play outside to learn all they
need to know about themselves and life.
It’s a sad thing, but most kids don’t get that in these modern busy
times, and that’s where children’s yoga can be beneficial.
Often in the "real" world, we ask our children to suppress
their natural instincts to make noise and move in odd, loud and distracting ways. As children’s yoga teachers, we learn to
manage the loud, energetic, controlled chaos in a way that teaches them impulse
control and ultimately how to have a “loud” body and quiet mouth. In this program, you’ll learn many games that
assist you in managing the group without extinguishing their natural (and correct) impulses for
experience and understanding in the physical world—creating better humans and
yogis in the process. For the children,
these kinds of exercises are the beginnings of discovering that the body is
separate from the consciousness and one can be relaxed in the body with an
alert mind, and/or have an alert, active body and calm mind.
Really understanding child
development (mental, emotional, physical, spiritual) is critical to designing
age appropriate yoga classes that actually teach the child yoga, rather than
take them through a series of entertaining physical movements and games. For example, until age 8 or so, they are
practically in their own magical world, and the messages should be hidden in
the stories, songs, games and poses—much like children’s fairy tales. It
helps me to think of the kids as little spiritual creatures who are new inhabitants
of a body and the physical world and they are just testing things out to see
what they can do. I think when we stifle
this as children, we end up as overly individualized adults, which in my
opinion, creates humans unaware of the group. The question, which kids
understand and seek to answer, is NOT "how do I become powerful?",
but "what do I do with all this power?"
This is why we spend an entire
weekend just on child development and how to teach yogic practices and concepts
to children in a developmentally appropriate way. We want you to leave with all the tools to
create your own children’s yoga experience.
Don’t worry, we’ll teach you all the games, songs and stories we know,
but we’ll also teach you how to create your own. And it’s through this process that you become
a teacher of yoga to children and understand them better.
Ultimately, as kids’ yoga teachers,
if we do our jobs well, we help them learn the tools to manage their power and
channel it effectively for the benefit of humanity, thereby doing our part to
create happier humans and a better world.
It’s the most important work, and I hope you’ll join us in Spring 2013.
“I really want to say how happy
I am and thank you for all your great help and teaching. I leave classes smiling and so happy to be
doing what I do now. I have a 3-4 year
old class, a kindergarten class, elementary class and a middle school class.”
~B.C., 2012 Little Friends Yoga Kids’ Yoga
Teacher Training Graduate
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: lizdoyle@msn.com
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