Instructor: Megan Knutson
Community: Adult group, Hospital employees with health risk factors, Hospital setting
Plan Creation Date: June 1, 2013
Yoga Calm Principle/Lesson Goal: Community
Lesson Plan:
Calm
- Pulse count – Find your pulse on your wrist, 15 second count (x4), if your heart rate and thoughts are racing from the busy work day, invite your breath to slow down, allow your mind to release its thoughts about the day, allow your breath to slow down and move with ease with our movements
- Volcano breath – Allow the breath to slow and pair your movement with your breath. Move at your own pace. Inhale reach the sky, exhale stretch the arms out to either side.
- Mountain – Think of a time you spent with friends and loved ones when you felt supported. Where were you? Pause. Who was there? Pause. What did they do to help you feel special, loved, and supported? Pause. Maybe you wish to dedicate this practice to your loved one. Notice how the reflection on this person who makes you feel special feel. You always have the power to tap into the happiness and peace of thinking of that person brings.
Activate
- Downdog – Press all four corners of your hands into the mat, align the creases of your wrists to lie parallel with the edge of your mat
- Child
- Downdog to star to side angle – Press evenly through the four corners of your feet, feel supported by the ground and light through your upper body
- Star – Active, extend, and energize in star. Hug your muscles to the bones and reach long through your finger tips – Turn the right foot forward and rest your right forearm on your right thigh, allow your heart to face the sky, reach forward as if you were reaching out to embrace your loved one through your top arm (repeat other side)
- Tree – Feel connected through your feet to the ground, begin to balance on one foot, hands can remain at chest or can extend overhead
- Tree circle – Press palms into each other and notice the support these hands offer you. Can you feel a difference from your first tree?
- Clock with partner – Palms touch, extend arms up and begin to let the arms move behind the side of your body as far back as is comfortable for you, be in tune with how far that is for your partner
- Partner pull – Extend arms long and hold one another’s forearms, let your hips sink back as if you wanted them to touch the wall behind you
Calm
- Forward fold
- Lying twist – knees come higher if you experience any pain in the low back
- Final relaxation – At this time, if it brings you peace, settle your thoughts on your loved one, reflect on how they support you and how you in turn support them – Read quote
- Hoberman’s Sphere breathing
- Pulse count – Can compare where it was when we began to now after class when we are relaxed