Instructor: Anne Geuss
Community: 6 – 8 year olds, community center class
Plan Creation Date: May 27, 2013
Yoga Calm Principle/Lesson Goal: Listening
Lesson Plan:
Calm
- Belly breathing – listening to your breath. Try to be still and quiet enough to listen to how your body feels. Your body talks to you through feeling. Listen…
- Pulse Count – for 60sec, sharing and listening to others’ counts
Activate
- Yoga Calm Mat 20 – 2x through with a different student leading, and student drumming. Concentrate on listening to the drum beat- transitioning to each pose in 4 beats, and holding each position for 4 beats. Compliments for the leading students and for the drummers.
- Strong Voice & Calm Voice – With students lying on their backs, verbally prompting them to find their Strong voice within, noticing where they feel it. Is your strong voice loud or soft? High or Low? What does your Strong voice say? When might you need to use your Strong voice? Now we’re going to put away our strong voices so that we can find our Calm voices. Where do you feel your calm voice? What does it sound like? Say? When might a calm voice help you?
- Personal Space – Now we’re going to explore listening without using our ears to listen! Sometimes we need to know how to listen to what people aren’t saying, but to what they are doing or showing us. Partner students up and practice the personal space activity first with words (saying “stop, please”, or “that’s close enough” then with only body language.
Calm
- Volcano Breaths – Student leads Volcano Breaths ending with compliments
- Compliment Game – practicing our Calm voices and Listening to one another
- Twists and Final Relaxation – Imagine you are a tiny, tiny, baby mouse. Tip-toe along quietly, you don’t want to be seen because you are watching a family eat dinner, waiting for their crumbs and leftovers. As you wait you listen to the family talk. Who is sitting at the table? What are they talking about? You listen… not making a single squeak. Soon, you hear they are cleaning up the dishes and leaving the table. Listen until you can’t hear them any longer. Once you are sure they are gone- you don’t hear a thing, you tip-toe under the table to see what crumbs they left behind to snack on. Once you have eaten all you want, you find a comfortable spot by the window and listen to the rainfall…