Instructor: Josh Zeller
Community: After School Program, Grade 3-4
Plan Creation Date: February 22, 2009
Yoga Calm Principle/Lesson Goal: Grounding
Lesson Plan:
Calm
- Tree Study- Sitting next to tree or with picture. How does a tree stay so strong? Talk about roots and how they hold the tree into the ground.
- Belly Breathing with Hoberman sphere 10 breaths. Shut your eyes and feel your body slow down. Imagine that you are a tree and where ever your body is touching the ground, roots are growing deep down into the earth.
Activate
- Boat – Feel the hull or bottom of your boat connecting with the water. Roll through each wave, staying connected with the water as you roll.
- Mountain and Crescent Moon – Be a strong tall mountain. Shut your eyes and imagine that it is snowing on you. Remember how peaceful the world is when it is snowing.
- Standing Volcano – Feel deep down inside your mountain, there is a huge pool of lava, heating up as your arms and you are now a volcano erupting as your arms come down,
- Sun Salutation (3X with different leaders) with a focus on stillness – have the students be very still in warrior and plank
- Lightning Bolt – Legs compressed to the earth and arms blasting out into the sky
- Tree Pose – Let the wind blow through your branches, then return to stillness – feeling the contrast between windy and still
- Eagle – Now you are an eagle flying through wind and settling on the tree. Alternate between tree and eagle (3X each side)
- Waterfall – way and then the other
Calm
- Lie back on in a giant forest look at the trees above, feel the roots connecting beneath, making a giant nest to hold you in. Realize that bellow the earth, trees are always cradling you with their roots.