Instructor: Carolyn Ripp
Community: 7th Grade Health and PE Classes, School Setting, 60 minutes
Plan Creation Date: July 1, 2013
Yoga Calm Principle/Lesson Goal: Stillness
Setting: 7th Grade integrated Health and PE Classes : 44 students ( teach this lesson 3x a day) for 5 lesson unit, as a pilot program for a small grant I wrote through Cloquet Ed Foundation. The program was well received with 84% of students favorable response. Next year we will include 6th,7th, and 8th grade classes into the curriculum.
Props: yoga mat, music, Hoberman ball
Lesson Plan:
Calm
- Opening remarks – Take time to really taste smell and digest each moment, understanding that we only have now, this very moment.
- Belly breathing – with hands on belly feeling belly expand like a balloon and slowly out through the nose balloon completely releasing , like a balloon with a slow leak, through the nose.
- Hoberman spere – for visuals, close eyes, listen to the stillness, nothingness in supine position
Activate
(Each pose, slow insightful, inquiring, held 3-5 breaths)
- Rock and roll
- Cobra – roll to belly (prone) for beginning cobra
- Table – reach right arm, left leg , then alternate with left arm, right leg
- Extended child’s pose
- Downward facing dog – slowly walking hands and feet together,
- Mountain
- Tree – right and left, trees on a still day, finding stillness in a storm around you, where might you be able to utilize this concept?
- Mountain – As we stand in mountain, feel feet rooted into the earth.,
- Eagle
- Flying your eagle – centered, still, and calm
Calm
- Relaxation – Many of us will immediately associate being calm and still with being sleepy, because we haven’t practiced this skill before, it is new to us. So, when we slow down and ask our bodies to slow down, the immediate response is , to go to sleep. So today we are going to try and find stillness, starting in a supine position. I understand this is hard, but see if you can do it even if ever so briefly.
- Progressive relaxation – script starting from top of the head, through face, neck shoulders back, arms, legs and toes. Can you be still like a lake with no ripples, calm, serene, completely awake, yet completely relaxed, soothed by calm …. Enjoy this for a few minutes, feel sun on skin, hear the birds. Awake, alert, calm , relaxed.
- Changing Channels – Now changing channels activity – Be in your favorite place, Walk in the forest, Smell home baked cookies, Be with your favorite people, Be with yourself. Happy and content to be you, No one else like you with same strengths, celebrate that!