Category: Pose of the Week

A camel has two humps, and a dromedary, a type of camel, has only one. Both store fat (not water) in their humps.

Instructions

1. Kneel on the floor with your legs and knees hip width apart.
2. Press the tops of your feet into the floor, push the thighs forward, bring the hands to the lower back with fingers pointing upward and lift the chest.
3. Breathe evenly in and out, as you extend the ribcage and broaden your chest.
4. Continue to lift your chest with each breath as you curl your toes forward and bring your hands to the heels to imitate the camel’s hump. The head can come back (as shown) or tuck into the chest.
5. Delight in the dromedary for ten seconds.
6. Rest in the child’s pose after each of these backbends.
7. Repeat.

Increase the times and repetitions as your spine and chest continue to become more flexible.

Note to Parents and Teachers

This pose strengthens the back and kidneys. Because of its chest opening ability, it can increase lung capacity and can be especially beneficial for children with asthma. It also helps the posture of those with drooping shoulders and rounded backs.

Activity Ideas for Home and Classroom

Ecological Echoes
Camels and dromedaries avoid trotting and galloping whenever possible in order to save water and energy. They can survive for months without water and can drink up to 35 gallons of water at a time.

Awesome Anatomy
Lift your chest, by letting the arch of your spine and your back ribs support you. Imagine your back ribs as lounge chairs for your lungs. Let your lungs expand and rest on these slatted chairs. Feel how much your lungs can expand when you breathe fully.

The lungs are light and spongy and are filled with millions of air channels which provide an enormous surface to absorb oxygen. If your lungs were flattened out, they’d make a slippery surface the size of a tennis court!*

* The Children’s Atlas of the Human Body by Richard Walker, The Millbrook Press Inc., 1994, Pg. 24

Flamingos are born with soft gray feathers. Around their 3rd birthday, their color turns flaming pink or orange. That’s quite a birthday present! Their feathers are orange and pink because their diet of algae and shrimp are high in carotenoids. Carotenoids are what give carrots their orange hue and make cooked shrimp pink…like a flamingo’s feathers! If the flamingos stopped eating this type of diet, its feathers would eventually go back to being white.

Instructions

1. Begin in mountain pose.
2. Spread your arms open like graceful wings as your left leg extends straight back.
3. Bend forward at the hip hinge.
4. Establish your balance little by little as you adjust your arms and back leg.
5. Clear your mind and fix your attention on your breath, body and focusing friend. Notice when your thoughts are scattered, your pose is unsteady too.
6. If you feel like flying, gently flap your wings Repeat with the opposite leg.

Do both sides 2-3 times.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Ecological Echoes
A flamingo flies with its head and neck stretched out in front. And, unlike other feathered friends, flamingos bend and stretch their legs behind them when balancing. Can you feel the difference between stork and flamingo?

Math Medley
Flamingo wings are about 60 inches from tip to tip. How many feet is that? Hint: 1 foot = 12 inches What is your wingspan? Measure from fingertip to fingertip.

Body Benefits
Flamingo legs might look scrawny and spindly, but they’re not. This pose strengthens, shapes and tones the legs. The upper body may then experience a sense of feathery lightness. Praise your child as you see them become more graceful, poised and balanced.

Stretch your whole body – arms, legs, toes, spine and fingers. Become gooey and sweet as you fold forward and make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Instructions

1. Begin in L is for Left. Reach up and grab the peanut butter and jelly jars that are floating through the air. Can you reach them?
2. Rub PB & J all over your hands and smear it between your toes. Fold forward and make a sandwich by pressing your upper body towards your lower body.
3. Spread it all over your legs and on your belly as you learn the names of your bones and muscles.
4. Wash your face and hair in peanut butter and jelly.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Awesome Anatomy
Teach your children to learn the parts of their body with age appropriate anatomical names and words.

Body Benefits
When you fold forward at the hip hinge, like in this pose, it is called a forward bend. Forward bends stretch the hamstrings, calves and all the muscles of the back. In time, you will become more flexible and be able to lengthen your legs and spine more.

Math Medley
The average child eats 1,500 PB&J sandwiches before he or she graduates high school. How many is that each day, week, month, year, decade, century?

Bridge of Diamonds
In other countries, peanut butter is not as popular as it is in the US and Canada. In Australia, they eat Vegemite, in Italy, they eat pizza. In Mexico, tacos. Black beans and rice in Brazil. Chicken rice in Singapore. Pho in Vietnam.

Nutrition Tip
Since many of you just love PB&J, take it up a few notches with these healthy tips.

• Start with a multi grain, whole grain bread. One fun way to get your kids involved is making bread. The easiest and fastest way is to use a bread machine. Children love to put in the ingredients before they go the bed at night, set the timer and wake up to the smell and taste of delicious, homemade bread. Yummy. And they are so proud of themselves too.
• Try using a jar of natural or organic peanut butter. Try to avoid the peanut butters with partially hydrogenated oils – they have a long shelf life and lots of flavor but the trans fat are unhealthy and do not digest well in our bodies. Did you know you can make butter from all kinds of nuts: almonds, cashews, sesame, pistachio. Try it out.
• How about bananas instead of Jelly? What else would taste yummy with peanut butter? Apples? Honey? Avocado? Experiment and explore. Look for jams made from the whole fruit. These are naturally sweetened without the addition of high fructose corn syrup and other added sugars.

Dolphins are mammals just like you. They have lungs and they breathe air, even though they live in the water! They also have their own language. Can you speak Dolphinese?

Instructions

1. Begin on all fours. Lower your elbows to the floor. Make sure that your knees are under your hips.
2. Clasp your elbows with the opposite fingers to keep proper spacing. Shoulders remain aligned over the elbows.
3. Move your lower arms forward, interlace your fingers, and make a triangle. Your hands are one point, and your elbows are the other two points. Breathe as your spine lengthens, your tailbone lifts up, your legs stretch.
4. Press your heels towards the floor.
5. Move your body forward so your chin touches down in front of your fingers.
6. Breathe out and lift out of the water.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Body Benefits
This pose builds agility and flexibility in the joints of the shoulders, hips, knees and ankles as well as strengthens the muscles of the arms, legs and belly. Do the dolphin and build your upper body strength.

Math Medley
As you already know, dolphins are mammals just like us and have lungs like we do. Although they need to surface for a gulp of air about every five minutes or so. Do the math: If they were to swim for one hour, how many times would they come up for air? For 5 hours? For a whole day? Month?

Musical Musings
Dolphins squeeze air back and forth between breath sacs under their blowholes. Can you make clicking sounds and patterns like a dolphin singing his watery melodies?

Nutrition Tip
Did you know there are vegetables in the sea? Guess what they’re called? Yup, you guessed it — SEA VEGETABLES! They contain many vitamins and minerals. They have more nutrients than any other food on the planet!  These funny sea vegetables are very different then most of the foods we are used to. Sea vegetables balance our blood and can help us to calm down when are bodies are over-active and excited.

These sea vegetables have fun and exotic names like:

• Kombu
• Wakame
• Kelp
• Agar Agar
• Hijiki

Can you say those? Now you’re speaking some Japanese.

Here are some ways to get cooking with the sea:

• Add wakame to spaghetti sauce.
• Use kelp or dolce instead of salt.
• Bake with agar agar (instead of gelatin) as a base for custards, puddings and jello. It will thicken sauces too. (It’s also a vegetarian substitute for gelatin.)
• Cook kombu with rice and beans to up the minerals in your body.

Experiment, look for recipes and talk about this new and interesting addition to menu!

Ground yourself. Feel the earth at your feet. Spread your energy all the way through your finger branches and to the sky just like trees do.

Pose Instructions

1. Begin in Mountain. Imagine roots growing out of your feet, connecting to the earth.
2. Bend one leg and place the sole of that foot on the inside of the standing leg, anywhere between your ankle and thigh.
3. Bend your right knee and press your foot against the inside of your left leg. As your balance grows stronger, you will be able to raise your foot higher on your leg.
4. Bring your hands to your chest, palms together in Namaste position, raise your arms and stretch them out wide like the limbs of a tree. Separate your fingers and stretch those little finger branches. Balance.
5. Hold for as long as you can and then slowly lower your foot to the floor and change sides.

Note to Parents and Teachers

This pose fosters balance, concentration and focus when practiced regularly. Make a family or class forest in the morning or at the end of day to keep you all connected. Make your group Tree pose a sharing circle.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Reading Comes Alive with Yoga
Celebrate the strength and unity of trees with books like The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein or The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest by Lynne Cherry. Go to the library with your children and find other “Tree’ titles, and develop the lifelong library habit early on.

Visual Vignettes
Draw a family tree and teach your children about their ancestors.

Ecological Echoes
Take your children on nature walks. Read under a tree about trees when the weather permits. Hug trees. Talk to trees. Balance upon their sturdy trunks and honor them with your beautiful self and the tree pose too.

Body Benefits
This pose develops strength and balance in the legs and torso. The reaching and stretching of the arms and fingers improves fine motor coordination too. Trees live on light and water and so do we. Imagine drinking water through the roots of your feet just like a tree. Water hydrates trees and our bodies too.

Nutrition Notes
Trees need lots of water. And so do YOU! The body is 75% water and needs to constantly be replenished. Dehydration can be the cause of a variety of symptoms including low energy, sugar cravings, dry and rough skin, fatigue, lack of focus and headaches. Water helps children stay alert and focused in the classroom and at home.

Learn all the YogaKids poses in our Certification Program!

You may have already become a Brave Warrior and a Bold Warrior, too. Now it is time to become a really powerful warrior. Make yourself as powerful as Super Girl and Super Boy.

Instructions

1. Jump your feet apart (Steps 1-6 are just like Bold Warrior.).
2. Stretch your arms straight out of the shoulders, palms down and fingers stretched.
3. Turn your toes toward the right.
4. Bend your right knee into a right angle.
5. Turn your torso forward.
6. Raise your arms alongside your ears. Feel the support of the earth underneath you and stretch your hands to the sky.
7. Shift your weight completely onto your front leg.
8. Pick up your back foot and stretch your leg behind you.
9. Keep both legs as long and strong as possible.
10. Stretch your arms forward. Fly.
11. Change sides.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Body Benefits
Many of our YogaKids also call this pose the Super Boy or Super Girl pose. They like to sway from side to side like they’re flying. Try this version and test your strength and balance.

Laughing Language
What makes you a Super Kid? Write down your words or have your mom or a grown-up help you. Here are some examples:

I am a Super Boy cause I can run really fast.
— Conrad, Michigan City, IN

My grandma calls me super girl because I love yoga and can bend in all different ways.
— Amy, New Buffalo, Michigan

I have a super cat and she can jump on and off the roof.
— Ruth, LaPorte, IN

We All Win
Try this pose with a partner and help each other.

1. Stand facing one another.
2. Stretch your arms overhead.
3. Bend forward at your hips and take hold of your friends hands, wrists or arms.
4. Balance together. Help each other. Smile at each other.
5. Switch legs.

Nutrition
Kids love to be fed with their airplane spoons when they were little. Their mouth was the hangar and the healthy sweets would come flying in. If your child needs some fun and incentive to eat healthy foods, play ‘Flying Foods.” Zigzag, loop-de-loop or circle her airplane spoon into her mouth filled with small, sweet, delicious fresh fruit pieces like strawberries, blueberries, bananas, mangos or papaya. Organic, naturally sweetened yogurts, whole grain cereals and raisins, currants or other dried fruits may also be appreciated.

Let’s do some wacky walking, and find flexibility and fun with our feet.

Pose Instructions

1. Lift your heels and walk high on your tiptoes.
2. Lower your heels to the floor, lift your toes in the air, and walk on your heels.
3. With your feet flat on the floor, roll your ankles in toward each other. Balance on the inside edge of your feet (your arches) and walk.
4. Roll your ankles away from each other, balance on the outside edge of your feet, and walk around again.

Activity Ideas for Home and Classroom

Musical Musings Element
Put on your favorite music or make your own. Clap your hands to a beat or grab a pair of rhythm sticks like Devon and Kiva in the above photo. Listen to different types of music and ankle-heel-toe-arch walk to the various beats that your hear. Enjoy toe jamming with your feet.

We All Win Element
Play “Follow the Leader.” Mix up the four styles of wacky walking in various combinations and call out the directions to the children. Take turns being the leader of the ankle-heel-toe-arch walking brigade.

Awesome Anatomy
Your feet contain 52 bones, 66 joints, 38 muscles and 214 ligaments. One quarter of all the bones in your body are in your feet. This pose helps you locate the bones in your feet. Can you feel ‘em all ?

Body Benefits
Good posture starts with happy feet. The feet set the alignment of the body structure from the ground up. Flexibility and muscle tone in the feet is an important part of overall fitness.

Visual Vignettes
Have students trace their feet and label the parts: toes, nails, heel, arch, ball, and maybe even some reflexology points. Encourage them to add decorations like toe rings, tattoos, henna or nail polish to their drawings.