Category: Pose of the Week

This pose goes by many names in yoga. Some call it the mouse pose, others call it the rock pose. Most call it the child’s pose, because babies often sleep this way.

Instructions

1. Sit on your heels.
2. Spread your knees a little, so your belly relaxes inside of your thighs.
3. Bend at the hips and fold forward letting your shoulders drop downward, away from your ears and spine. Your arms lie back alongside your legs with open palms.
4. Place your forehead on the floor, or turn it to one side for awhile and then to the other side to gently stretch the neck.
5. Take at least five breaths on each side.
6. Press your sit bones towards your heels as you stretch your arms alongside your head, palms down.
7. This position is known as the extended child’s pose. It “extends” the spine, shoulders, arms and fingers. It’s an alternative to the traditional child’s pose.

You can stay in either of the child’s poses for as long as you want to.

Note for Parents and Teachers

Any pose in yoga where you bend the body in half at the hips is a forward bend. Child’s pose, PBJ and Ragdoll are some other favorite YogaKids pose examples for children. Forward bends are soothing, calming and quieting. Encourage your child to rest in the child’s pose if she’s feeling agitated. Gently stroke her back with a light, feathery touch to relax her even more.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Awesome Anatomy

Can you breathe into your back in the child’s pose? Can you feel your 12 ribs separating and moving as you breathe?

Body Benefits

The spine relaxes and elongates in this pose. The space between the vertebrae increases, as does the flow of blood and circulation to the brain. Its benefits are varied and great; from calming and relaxing to increasing the oxygen throughout the system.

Quiet Quests

Imagine a giant zipper from your neck to your tailbone. Let that zipper unzip slowly from top to bottom. As it unzips feel both sides of your back melt away from your spine. Breathe into your back. Let your back become so soft from your breath, that it feels like you have no bones there.

Ecological Echoes

Animals without backbones are called invertebrates. Some examples of invertebrates are worms and jellyfish. This pose might be renamed the jelly fish pose.

The stork is a symbol of good luck. Make a wish when you practice the stork, and you might just get what you ask for. This pose is one of the easier balance poses. It teaches two important skills: stillness and focus. We sometimes call this pose “crane,” even though storks and cranes are not really the same kind of bird. They are both long-necked, large members of the avian family. Storks live in both dry and wet environments, whereas cranes tend to live mostly around water. How can you tell them apart? Have you ever heard the phrase, “crane your neck”? That means “to stretch out one’s neck.” Cranes have necks that they bend, or “fold” while they’re flying and resting.

Instructions

1. Begin in mountain pose. Breathe evenly in and out.
2. Gaze at a focus friend to help you balance, as you bend your left knee and lift your left foot off the ground.
3. Keep your leg in a right angle or tuck your foot inside your knee.
4. Lift your right arm and bend it at the elbow. Relax your wrist.
5. Begin by holding the pose for 5 seconds. With patience and practice, your wobbling will wane and you will become an expert at this balancing act.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Ecological Echoes
Swamps and marshes are some of the stork’s favorite restaurants. On the menu are insects, fish, frogs, reptiles, young birds and small mammals. Do you eat some of the same foods as the stork?

Math Medley
Count the number of seconds you can hold your stork pose. Try to increase your balance for a few more seconds than last time. Soon you’ll be up to a minute, or even two or three minutes. How many seconds is that? (Hint: 60 seconds = 1 minute.)

Bridge of Diamonds
Storks are loving and nurturing parents. The legend that the stork brings the new baby arises from the fact that they take very good care of their young.

You are hot, filled with power and electricity. Sizzling! Pass it on by holding hands with your friends. Can you feel the electricity flowing through your body and between you and your companions? ZZZZAP!

Instructions

1. Sit cross-legged or in any comfortable position.
2. If you are old enough to know right and left, place the left palm up and the right hand palm-down.
3. Hold hands.
4. Close your eyes.
5. Imagine your heart. It is our power supply sending energy through our body.
6. Feel the breath move across your chest, flow down your arms and into the hands that you are holding. Do you feel heat? A tingly feeling? That’s the electricity moving through your body.
7. When you begin to feel it in your body, squeeze your friends hand. This is the signal to let each other know that a connection has been made. You have hooked up and the current is flowing.

Note to Parents and Teachers

Ask the children to tell you what is electric in their homes, schools and classrooms. Allow childlike answers for how these things work. It is important for them to express themselves through their own age-appropriate thought processes and words. Inspire and encourage their communication skills.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Laughing Language

Amps, volts and watts are three words to describe amounts of electric power or current. They are named after the scientists that “discovered” or “recognized” them.

Awesome Anatomy/Math Medley

Can you feel your heartbeat inside your chest? Your heart beats about a 100,000 times a day. How many times is that in an hour, a week, a month or a year?

Nutrition Tip (Our Electric Tongue)

All foods have different tastes. Some are salty. Some are bitter or sour. Most of us like sweet and salty the best. Experiment with the tastes of different foods. Be brave and daring and try new foods. Our taste buds enable us to taste all the varied, wonderful flavors the world’s gardens have to offer.

Bitter tastes like the vegetable kale, are mostly sensed towards the back and rear sides of the tongue. Sour tastes like lemon are mostly tasted at the sides of the tongue, at the middle and towards the front. Salty and sweet tastes are most people’s favorite taste. These are at the tip of the tongue.

Excite and surprise your tongue with new and different tastes. Delight your taste buds and body with power foods like fruits and vegetables. Feel the electricity of health run through your veins!

Crows are very intelligent animals. Like parrots, they can be trained to mimic our voices. They are known for their good memories and fascination with shiny objects. They love to play and play tricks!

Instructions

1. Begin in mountain pose with your feet wide.
2. Bend your knees and squat down.
3. Place your arms to the inside of your bent legs and press your hands with outstretched fingers into the floor.
4. Lean slightly forward. Bend your elbows outward to make a shelf for your knees.
5. Raise onto your tippy toes and place your left knee on your left “arm shelf.’
6. Then carefully place your right knee on your right “arm shelf.’

In the beginning, you may only lift one foot at a time off the floor. With patience and practice, you will balance in the crow. As you do, see if you can increase the time of this pose.

Note for Parents and Teachers

This is a difficult pose that requires strength and focus. It builds self-esteem and confidence and strengthens the arms. It even tones the organs of the belly, because the abdominal muscles automatically contract in order to maintain balance.

With children under five years old, getting up into the actual balance part of the pose is generally impossible. But, you can follow the instructions and guide them in the steps to teach them patience and determination.

Activities for Home and School

Bridge Of Diamonds
Crows, like some other kinds of birds, build their nests in communities. During the summer, they roost and flock together, hanging with their families. What do you do with your family in the summertime? YogaKids encourages family and community participation. There is much to learn when studying and observing our feathered friends.

Musical Medley
Their courtship ritual consists of dramatic flight shows, bowing, strutting and puffing of their feathers to impress their mates. Along with their bird dance, they sing a song that sounds like a rattle. Can you sing and dance in this pose?

Ecological Echoes
Crows are omnivorous. This means they eat both plants and animals. Insects, eggs, small mammals, reptiles, carrion, seeds. corn, fruits and nuts. Which of these foods do you eat?

These eye movements link all the parts of the brain by stimulating the corpus callosum – the brain’s superhighway. Simultaneously exercise your brain and eye muscles to make learning easier.

Instructions

Take any seated or standing position. Imagine a numbered clock hanging in front of your face. Try to keep your head still and move only your eyes. Do each exercise 3-6 times.

• Look up to 12 o’clock. Down to 6 o’clock. Reverse.
• Look right to 3 o’clock and left to 9 o’clock. Reverse.
• Look diagonally from 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock. Reverse.
• Look diagonally from 11 o’clock to 5 o’clock. Reverse.

Between each direction give your eyes a rest. Rub your hands together to create friction until they feel hot. Keeping your fingers together so no light penetrates, place your hands over your eyes (open or closed) to soothe them and allow them to soak up the heat. Open your relaxed eyes and continue.

Now make complete eye circles: Begin clockwise at 12 o’clock and look at each number around the face of the clock. Return to 12. Look counterclockwise from 12 and back. Palm the eyes and relax. Repeat.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Laughing Language,Reading Comes Alive with Yoga™,Musical Musings
Can you think of books and/or songs that have clocks and/or time in them? Read them. Sing the songs. Roll and rotate your eyes and increase your brain power. Have fun!

Visual Vignettes
Create fun and wacky clocks and watches out of available supplies. Use these as a focal point to focus your brain.

Body Benefits
Just like the rest of the body, the eyes have muscles too. Improve your eyesight with this pose.

Nutrition Tip
Just as this pose helps all of the different areas of our brain link together and creates balance between the right and left sides of our brains and bodies, there are foods that are also more equalizing for our bodies. Some foods make us feel slow, heavy, dry and sluggish; these include cheese, eggs, meat and salty snacks. Other foods give us a huge burst of crazy energy, but then leave us feeling tired and spaced out; These foods include sugar, coffee, pop and and an excess of fruit juices.

The most balancing food are the ones that leave us feeling energized and de-stressed like:

• Tofu, Leafy Greens & Seeds
• Roots and Winter Squash
• Beans and Sea Vegetables
• Whole GrainsFish

Eat more of these foods for a balanced, calmer you!

Did you know the sun is a star? There are billions upon billions of stars in the Universe, but the sun is one very special star that makes it possible for life to exist on Earth. The sun is the center of our solar system. It takes the Earth one year to travel all the way around the sun, which is 110 times bigger in diameter (the distance around the middle) than Earth! Without the sun, we would have no energy to grow plants and sustain life on our planet. Let’s reach up and grab some of that beautiful sunlight-energy so we can be strong and powerful!

Pose Instructions

1. Breathe in and reach up high with an outstretched hand.
2. Pretend that you are grabbing a piece of sunshine and pull the power into your solar plexus – your inner sun (the solar plexus is located between the chest and the navel).
3. Exhale with a “hah” breath.
4. Repeat with your other arm, alternating the reach with the left and right arms. As you practice, increase the force of your breath. Can you work up to 1, then 2 minutes. Feel the power of the sun shining inside of you. You are filled with light!

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Bridge of Diamonds Element
Encourage children to understand and trust their inner power. We do not need to exert force over anyone of anything. Let’s live in balance together.

Body Benefits Element
This is a perfect pose for tired, weary children. Reach for the Sun and pull energy into your body. Feel refreshed and ready to go!

Affirmations Element
Repeat these positive statements as you practice this pose:

• “I am powerful.”
• “If I feel afraid, I turn on the light inside of me.”
• “I have the power of the sun shining within me.”

When the butterfly first emerges from her cocoon, she will rest on a twig and spread open her wings to dry. Then she will gently flap her wings to warm them up before she takes off on her first flight. Where would you fly on your first flight?

Instructions

1. Begin in the “L” pose.
2. Bring the bottoms of your feet together with your heels close to your body.
3. Open your knees out to each side.
4. Extend your neck and the top of your head towards the sky. Stretch your spine long and strong.
5. Place your hands at the sides of your head and stick out your fingers for antennae.
6. Pull your arms back—now they’re your wings. Breathe in and out as you flap your wings forward and back.
7. Flap your leg wings up and down, too.

Notes for Parents and Teachers

Did you know you have antenna? Remember the times that you’ve sensed something before it occurred, or had a hunch and were right. This is called intuition. Intuition is having knowledge of something you haven’t seen. Our antenna help us achieve this. Try to honor your children’s instincts. It empowers them, and teaches them to trust their inner knowing. It’s an important survival skill to acquire at a young age. Balanced with a sense of love and trust in one’s self, this inner knowing will build confidence and trust that will serve them for life.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Ecological Echoes
Insects, like the butterfly, use their antennae like reptiles use their tongues. They are like a “sixth sense” to help detect danger, smell, and get a ‘reading’ on things in the air.

Quiet Quests/Visual Vignettes
Close your eyes. Get quiet and listen. Wiggle your antennae around. What do you sense? What do you see, smell or feel? Draw a picture of what you experience with your antenna.

Laughing Language
Take a butterfly journey from A to Z. Think of a place to go that begins with the letter A. Fly there right away. Then think of a place that begins with B and fly there, too. Fly through the alphabet, all the way to Zanzibar.

Brain Balance
Flapping your leg wings up and down and your arm wings back and forth, is kind of like rubbing your tummy and patting your head. It takes coordination and communication between the brain and the body. Practicing your butterflying will stimulate the dendrites (the branches of the brain cells) to grow and make new neural pathways.

Have you heard the expression, ‘as sharp as an eagle’s eye’? An eagle can see fish moving in the water from hundreds of feet in the air, as well as rabbits running almost a mile away. Their aerodynamically perfect wings contain about 7,000 feathers. They can gracefully glide great distances without flapping them.

Instructions

1. Stand in mountain.
2. Stretch your arms out to the side.
3. Exhale. Make an X crossing the arms above the elbows and give yourself a hug. Entwine them around each other.
4. Press the palms together in Namaste or interlace your fingers. Lift the arms.
5. Bend your knees. Cross one leg over the thigh and wrap it behind the calf.
6. Ground and perch with your lower body. Ascend and fly with your upper body.
7. Doesn’t this standing twist feel eagle-riffic!? Unwind. Wrap it up on the other side.

Notes for Parents and Teachers

The wrapping of the arms is a great stretch for the upper back and shoulders, as well as the fingers and wrist joints. If you or your child spend a considerable amount of time at the computer, take regular 1/2 eagle breaks sitting at your desk. Stand up now and then and do the full eagle too. It will energize your legs and invigorate your lower back, too.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Ecological Echoes
The use of DDT, a deadly pesticide, which is still being used today in many parts of the world, almost wiped out the eagle, our symbol of freedom. As Chief Seattle said, “We are part of the earth and the earth is part of us.” When we use chemicals on our grass or in our soil, they eventually come full circle. Teach your YogaKids to respect the earth and all of the flora and fauna that we share this planet with.

Laughing Language
Can you find words within the word eagle? Here are a few to get you started; leg, eel, age. Keep looking with your eagle eyes.

Brain Balance
The combination of the twisting and entwining in this pose invigorates the brain. It increases the flow of oxygen to make you alert and smart.

In adult yoga, this pose is called the bow. In YogaKids, we like to take our yoga through space, so we move forward and back like a rocking horse. Get ready to rock!

Instructions

1. Lie on your belly.
2. Bend your knees and reach back to take a hold of your ankles one at a time.
3. Lift and broaden your chest as you squeeze your shoulder blades and inner thighs together.
4. Look forward and bring your feet towards the sky. Notice how the entire back of your body contracts, so that the front of your body can open and lift with pride like a proud horse.
5. Take strong breaths in and out, as you begin to rock. Increase your rocking time with regular practice.

Do 3 rocking horses. Rest in the full or extended child’s pose when you get tired. Forward bends are counter poses to backbends. They have opposite effects. Backbends energize. Forward bends calm. Other back-bending poses in our YogaKids repertoire are Dromedary Delight, S is for Snake, Bubble Fish, Wheel and Bridge.

Notes for Parents and Teachers

This pose brings strength and elasticity to the back and spine, as well as the legs and shoulders. It stimulates the kidneys and adrenal glands, too. The rocking motion massages and awakens the internal organs. The rocking action in this pose should not be practiced right after eating. This pose is a excellent way to feel the prana (energy, life-force, vitality) of the breath enlivening the body. The more prana you can generate, the longer you will be able to keep your horse rocking.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Musical Musings
Sing The Rocking Horse song:

Rocking Horse, Rocking Horse, swing and glide back and forth
Rocking Horse, Rocking Horse, swing and glide back and forth
Gallop, trot, jump and play
Come back to the barn and feast on hay
Rocking Horse, Rocking Horse, swing and glide back and forth
Back and Forth, back and forth

Laughing Language/Visual Vignettes
Imagine an adventure on horseback. Close your eyes. Feel the wind rushing past you as you rock at great speed. What’s your horse’s name? Where will you travel together today? Name all the things you see on your journey. Tell your story to a friend, write it down or draw a picture of it.

Laughter is an international language. Pedaling a bike is excellent exercise. Put these two together and travel to the land of ha ha he he health.

Instructions

1. Sit in a chair or lie on your back.
2. Bend your arms and legs like you are riding bicycles in the air.
3. Pedal forward: laugh.
4. Pedal backward: laugh.

It might be hard to really laugh at first, but once you get started, you won’t be able to stop. Have fun and be silly with this pose!

Notes for Parents and Teachers

Laughing is a great way to lighten up an intense mood or situation. If tension is mounting and bad moods are escalating designate a laughing break. Remind yourself and your children to look at the lighter side of things.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Math Medley/Awesome Anatomy
Count out loud or use a timer to see how long each person can maintain their pedal laughing. Time pulses and heart rates too. Make a chart or graph to look at the comparisons.

Body Benefits
Laughter lowers blood pressure, reduces stress hormones, increases muscle flexion, boosts immune function and produces a natural body chemical called endorphins, which make you naturally feel good.

Musical Musings
Form a Pedal Laughing chorus or choir. High tone laughters are sopranos, low tone ones are bass. Medium low laughers are tenors and medium high are altos. Take turns being the conductors to bring in different voices, get louder or faster and to stop.

Nutrition Tip
Have fun with your food! Many of us have a “love-hate” relationship with food.  It is a necessary part of our daily lives but is often confusing, time consuming and takes us away from other activities we would rather be doing.  This week bring laughter into your life with the Pedal Pose and bring that laughter and feeling of play into the kitchen.

• Have family members create their favorite meal – participate in the menu planning, preparation and cleaning.
• Play music in the kitchen.
• Keep fresh flowers in your eating area.
• Practice cooking different types of foods – get the children involved in cooking new foods and new recipes.
• Connect Food to cultures or countries your children may be studying in school.
• Have family members select a vegetable or fruit of the week – something you have never tried – they find a recipe(s) and help with the preparation.
• Try to sit down and eat as a family at least a couple of times a week – no TV, no phones, no computers.  Enjoy a fun relaxed meal together.