To color:
No sugar, no crust…is this even pie?
I guess it’s not technically pie, but it has all the right flavors and it’s delicious!
Apples have lots and lots of natural sugars, like most fruits. Along with bananas, apples have some of the highest natural sugar content of any fruit. Sometimes apples and apple juice are even used as sweeteners, instead of processed sugar, for organic and natural desserts.
What does processed mean when we’re talking about sugar? The white granular sugar you may see in your home is usually made from these two plants:
Sugar cane is a type of grass that is packed full of natural sugar. Sugar beets are beet plants with very sugary roots. When they are processed, the cloudy brown, sugary juices are squeezed out of the plants by machines. The water from the juice evaporates, and brownish sugar crystals are left over. Sometimes these brown sugar crystals are sold as sweeteners. Sometimes, they are cleaned even more, pulling out all the minerals and vitamins and leftover microscopic bits of plant matter, until it is sparkling and white, leaving only the sugar behind. This is what we call table sugar. It is as pure as sugar gets.
It’s OK to have this type of sugar in moderation, meaning sometimes, and in small quantities. But it’s better for your body if you can enjoy sweets in their natural form, like eating a whole apple or banana.
We’re going to make a delicious apple-pie-like dessert, with only the sweetness of the apples themselves for sugar!
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Put all the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl and combine well. Melt the butter in the microwave for 10-15 seconds. Add the apples and toss them into the mixture to lightly cover them with the spices and flour. Now add the water and melted butter, and smoosh it all around with your fingers until all the apples are covered with the spices and flour mixture. Spread everything out evenly in an 8×8″ baking pan and bake for about 40 minutes, stirring the apples every 10-15 minutes.
What you will end up with is an ooey-gooey apple pie filling that you can eat just like it is for a healthy snack or dessert, put on top of ice cream, or add to a bowl of granola. Yum!
* Vegan Option: Replace butter with coconut oil.
Teaching yoga has many rewards, but it can be lonely at times if you haven’t yet cultivated a supportive community. Many YogaKids Teachers travel from studio to studio. We’re usually the only adult in the room and, while teaching in schools, we are usually the only yoga teacher on staff. Having a community of support is vital for a teacher’s continued growth and success.
RESEARCH ON CONNECTIONS
When we make a positive social connection, the pleasure-inducing hormone oxytocin is released into our bloodstream, immediately reducing anxiety and improving concentration and focus. In a study appropriately titled “Very Happy people,” researches sought out the characteristics of the happiest 10% among us. There was one characteristic that distinguished the happiest 10% from everybody else; the strength of their social relationships. Social support was a far greater predictor of happiness than any other factor — more than income, job status, age gender, or race.
BENEFITS OF BEING PART OF A LIKE-MINDED COMMUNITY OF YOGA TEACHERS
TEACHERS FORUM
In the YogaKids community, we have a very active Teachers Forum where teachers from all over the world come together and enrich, motivate, and inspire each other. For instance, Clare, a teacher from New Jersey just logged on and asked for classroom management ideas for her active class of preschoolers. Within 24 hours, she had 8 responses from yoga teachers, classroom teachers and even a therapist. Clare could not have researched this topic and gotten better information. What can you do in your area to cultivate a connection similar to the YogaKids support system? You can join LinkedIn, or start a private Facebook forum and ask yoga teachers to join.
HOST A TEACHERS CLASS
Teach a class specifically for teachers and invite other yogis. Share your expertise, training and enthusiasm for yoga. Ask a different teacher to present different topics of interest to the group at each meeting.
SOCIALIZE
Plan inspirational social outings. Recently, a group of YogaKids teachers met up in Chicago and enjoyed a vegetarian meal followed by a Kirtan (chanting hymns or mantras to the accompaniment of instruments). Being around like-minded people offers a fresh perspective on life and livelihood. Other social events our Chicago group has attended include gong healings, arco yoga workshops, and spa nights. Host an event, invite all the Yogis you know, and pass the coordinating job onto another participant for the next event. A small amount of organization and follow through will result in many fun, rewarding events for all.
FIND A MENTOR
Find a mentor or professional guide. In the YogaKids program we have a professionally trained mentoring community of yoga teachers, OTs, PTs, and professional educators. This team regularity holds informative webinars, submits articles on a wide variety of topics, posts inspirational educational content to our private forum, and holds monthly team calls. To be able to connect with such a diverse, professional group is extremely valuable to our community. To form your own connections, look to teacher training schools for mentorship opportunities. Many senior teachers are willing and eager to guide a junior teacher on her path to greatness.
ATTEND A TEACHERS RETREAT
A yoga retreat can be a time of renewal, growth, connection. Practice, socialize and interact with a group of like-minded teachers and yoga practitioners often at beautiful, exotic locations. Often connections made on retreats last long after check out and these connections can cultivate and grow even over long distances to become part of your active teaching community.
Sharing passion for your yoga career can be a very rewarding and fulfilling experience. As poet Donna Favors says, Life has taught me that respect, caring and love must be shared, for it’s only through sharing that friendships are born. Here is hoping you make beautiful connections.
Coffee Filter Flowers are easy to make and very pretty!
Coffee filters are made of a very porous type of paper — porous is an adjective used to describe things that have many tiny holes that allow water and air to pass through them. Rocks, fabric, and papers are a few of the things that can be porous.
Coffee filters have to be porous because the water needs to pass over the ground-up coffee beans, taking away only flavor and color, into the coffee pot below. The same thing happens with rainwater as it flows through many layers of porous rocks and dirt, which slowly filter out little particles until the rainwater reaches underground aquifers, where the water pools inside the earth, purified after many years.
Porous paper is really fun for making water-based color crafts, because we can see the color travel through the porous surfaces. Sometimes we get unexpected results, and we can see mixed colors separate into different colors! For instance, green is made using a combination of the colors yellow and blue, so if you allow green inks to separate on a coffee filter, in some cases you will be able see both the yellow and blue colors pull apart as they travel over the porous surface of the paper.
Materials
Instructions
Adding color (Two Ways)
Now: you may either touch the cotton swabs with color on them directly onto the coffee filters, or you may first use the clean water to wet your coffee filter before adding the color.
If you add the color to dry filters, the color will be more saturated, and will not separate as much. The filters should dry fairly quickly, unless you really put a lot of color on.
If you add the color to wet filters, it takes less color to “travel” over the surface of the paper. The filters will dry much more slowly, and may need to be set on a plate in a sunny window. If you live in a very dry place, the water will evaporate more quickly than if you live in a place with high humidity.
Finishing Up
Let the filters dry completely. Open them up and see your beautiful flowers!
Now, pinch the flower together at the center of each filter and tie it off tightly, using your yarn, string, or floral wire. Make sure you leave long enough ends on your fastening material so you can tie them onto the stems you’ve chosen.
Try putting two or three coffee filters together to make beautiful, multicolored flowers.
Now, give your pretty filter flowers to a friend, to brighten his or her day!
*PARENT PRO-TIP! Go to a store that carries food service supplies (like Smart & Final, Cash & Carry, etc.), to get big bottles of food coloring for about the same price you’d pay for the four-pack of tiny squeeze bottles at a normal grocery store. I got 16 oz. bottles of red, yellow, blue, and green, for about $2.75/each, a quantity that will last roughly three human lifetimes.
Warning: The food coloring WILL stain your clothes, work surfaces, fingers, etc. Make sure you plan and work accordingly.
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?
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.
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.
Homework is done, bellies are full, the kitchen is clean and my daily mom duties are coming to a close. But for some reason, every night, when it is time for my three kids to get ready for bed, they get a second wind. They begin to run around, play or grab their favorite toy. They remind me of wind-up toys that keep going and going.
Their young bodies are not totally exhausted like mine, and they don’t desire the sweet silence of a sleeping house, so they are not motivated to go to bed. With my yoga background, I understand they cannot just flip the switch from active play to rest. Instead they need time to transition and prepare their bodies for sleep. Yoga breathing and poses help calm my children and create a shift in their mood, which triggers the relaxation response in their bodies, and enables them to not only fall asleep faster, but sleep better.
The first thing I do is reduce their sensory input. We turn the lights down and turn off the music and other electronics. While seated comfortably, we practice Take 5 Breath, which helps to calm and center them. We then do a special Peace Breath; as we quietly exhale the word “peace,” we begin to imagine what peace looks like. We also like to say other words, like “love” or “ kindness,” and try to visualize those words too.
Child’s Pose is naturally calming and is a great way to not only release tensions in the back and hips, but as a gentle inversion, it also calms the nervous system. While lying on our backs, we do a little progressive relaxation exercise described in Lemon Toes Pose. We pretend to drink sour lemonade through our toes as we squeeze all the muscles in our bodies and then relax them. This helps us to release muscular tension and rest. Lastly, we practice Swim Ducky Swim. By placing a little stuffed toy on our bellies, we breathe more fully and deeply with our diaphragm as we take it for a little ride. Focusing on the exhale helps to relax the body even more.
After a few minutes of deep breathing, my kids are finally ready to go to sleep and I can enjoy the beautiful silence. To help make the transition to bedtime a breeze, create a routine with your kids and include some yoga breathing exercises and poses. Do the poses with them and notice how you sleep better too! (Learn all these poses in our YogaKids book!)
YogaKids Poses:
So my daughter is being bullied. She’s 9 years old and in the third grade. It’s gotten bad enough that her miserable social experience has morphed into a physical ailment — a chronic morning tummy ache every day before school. I met today with her teacher and principal to discuss the situation — and they both expressed surprise. Not that it was happening (they’re not that naive)… but that they were both totally unaware of it. (I should point out that it’s a really small school.)
But honestly, I’m not at all surprised that they were in the dark. Girl meanness can be insidious and sneaky. (Oh, I remember it well.) And I can’t help thinking how difficult it must be for my daughter to express the type of meanness she’s experiencing. The mean girl isn’t pulling her hair — an offense that would be easy to share with her teacher. (“She keeps pulling my hair!”)
No, no… the mean girl is just quietly telling all the other girls in the class not to be her friend. How does a little girl find the words for that?
(And… ouch. Let’s just take a moment here to remember the pain of adolescence.)
As a mom, my initial reaction to all this was pretty predictable. I’ve been in momma bear-mode — and I kinda want to rip the ponytail off this little girl’s head for hurting my child. Not a particularly productive response — and one I’m not proud of — but an honest reaction to be sure. However, as a part of YogaKids, I know I have to let that raging feeling go and look at the bigger picture.
Now I know there’s a great deal of education and resources out in the world to help those that are being bullied. And I’ve certainly shared them all with my daughter. And while that’s great… it does nothing to actually solve the problem. To solve the problem, we have to address the root cause. We have to shift focus from the victim to the aggressor. (This is feeling like familiar territory, women, isn’t it?)
So why is this girl, at 9 years old, being mean to my sweet daughter? I know from my years studying child development — and observing my own children — that kids behave in ways that get the results they seek. Behavior is learned — and when a behavior gets the desired result, the behavior gets reinforced. Again and again. So what is the bully getting by being mean? Well, I’m not 100% certain — but I can make an educated guess that she’s getting a couple of “wins”: 1) attention from the other girls and 2) a feeling of power when my child reacts.
If social behavior is viewed as a means to an end (i.e. fulfilling specific needs) — then we need to focus on those needs. What other ways can this little girl experience these desired “wins”? How else can she feel powerful? How else can she get attention? How else — in essence — can she feel good about herself… without the collateral damage that comes with bullying?
Today I spoke with the principal and the teacher about the specifics of my daughter’s situation. But tomorrow? I’m going to be talking to them about implementing a school-wide mindfulness program that can get to the root. It’s time to stop only looking at the effects — and to start looking at the causes. At YogaKids, this is what we do. We teach cooperation over competition, kindness over cruelty, and give kids the tools to empower themselves… without hurting others.
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.
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.
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.
I started the YogaKids training back in 2007 because I wanted to gain the skills and tools I needed to successfully teach yoga to kids. What I found over the course of the one year program, and the years that followed, was that it not only provided me with the skills I needed to teach — but in many ways helped me to become happier in all aspects of my life. For me it really was a certification in happiness, as it taught me how to love better, nurture myself, and to experience life with a greater sense of awe. Below are many of the key benefits I gained from the program.
A Regular Yoga Practice
During the YogaKids At Home Practicum, YogaKids Apprentices (YKAs) are instructed to cultivate a regular yoga practice. Many of us would love to do this, but find it difficult to commit the time necessary to reap the benefits of a regular practice. Researchers estimate that 75 to 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for complaints and conditions that are, in some way, stress-related. Yoga, meditation and breathing techniques are three very important tools for relieving stress. Regular yoga practitioners typically report less pain, more vitality and a deep sense of peace. What happens on a yoga mat doesn’t stay on the yoga mat; it spills over into every aspect of one’s life in wonderful ways.
Parenting Skills
Parenthood can be a time of great inner turmoil. The YogaKids program teaches a calm approach to caring for yourself and your children. Patience, mindfulness and a focus on the bigger picture allows us to parent with love, patience, and gentle guidance, and opens us up to the possibility that not everything may go as exactly planned — and sometimes this leads to life’s most joyful experiences.
Improved Relationships
The qualities that our YKAs experience as a result of the training (love, exuberance, and a playful exuberance) affect not only their lives in a profoundly wonderful way; it affects the lives of everyone they touch. Once I began a daily meditation practice combined with asana (yoga postures) practice, my husband found that I was more compassionate, understanding, and appreciative of him — which all affected our relationship in a wonderful way. In her article Master of Love, author Emily Smith states that of all the couples that get married, only 3 in 10 remain in healthy, happy marriages. In most marriages, levels of satisfaction drop dramatically within the first few years together. But among couples who not only endure, but live happily together for years and years, the spirit of kindness and generosity guides them forward. Not only did my marriage improve, but my friendships became more satisfying and meaningful as well. When you start offering your time, advice, and companionship for no other reason than to simply give of yourself, the rewards are immeasurable. When you give and expect something in return, disappointment usually follows.
Community and Life-Long Friendships
The YogaKids live trainings (Foundations and Transformations) bring together a unique group of like-minded people from all across the world. The connections made at the live events often last much longer than the training. When we make a positive social connection, the pleasure-inducing hormone oxytocin is released into our bloodstream, immediately reducing anxiety and improving concentration and focus. YogaKids circles are full of lovely like-minded people joining together with a common goal — to spread the love of yoga to the world, one child at a time.
Experience Childlike Joy
One of my favorite YogaKids poses is Pedal Laughing. You lie down and pedal the hands and feet as if you are on a bike and… laugh. A good belly laugh doesn’t just lighten the load mentally; it lowers cortisol, your body’s stress hormone, and boosts brain chemicals called endorphins which help your mood. In a YogaKids class, we bark in Down Dog, pick bugs off each other in Bug Pickin’ Chimp and wiggle our noses in Bunny Breath. Try doing any of these poses without smiling or laughing. The very nature of many of the YogaKids poses is joy.
Teachers join the YogaKids Certification for many different reasons — from professional enrichment to starting a new career. Most of our teachers find that the personal rewards are just as impactful — if not more than — the professional opportunities that the program provides. I know it’s been that way for me.
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.
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.
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.