Instructor: Morgan Watson
Community: Grade 7, Therapeutic Group, 60 minutes
Plan Creation Date: November 22, 2015
Yoga Calm Principle/Lesson Goal: Grounding
Lesson Plan:
Calm
- Belly Breathing – (2 minutes), feeling the weight of your body on your yoga mat. Make your legs and thighs heavy, feel the gravity holding you to the earth. Feel your hands on your stomach rise up and down with the flow of your breath. Visualize becoming one with the earth, feeling supported and grounded.
- Compliments – (1 minute)-Invite group members to give complements.
- Pulse Count – (1 minute), find your pulse, then listen to the beat of your heart.
- Mindful Moment Cards – Set intention (1 minute),- Mindfulness Card (Grounding)-Ask each student to read their cards out loud.
- Chime – (30 seconds)
Activate
(Ask group members to lead each pose to the group).
- Cat/Cow – (1 minute)-Imagine your hands, knees, and feet connecting to the ground; connecting to the ground.
- Downward Dog – (2 minutes)- Starting walking the dogs; visualize working your calves, legs, and feet working closer and closer to the ground. Now, when you’re read give your dogs a break and allow your heels to fall as close to the ground as they can go without hurting yourself.
- Forward Bend – (1 minute): Imaging that your reaching for the ground as you bend over; working toward becoming one with ground. It’s important that we work on focusing our awareness inward.
- Upward Mountain – (1 minute)- Imagine your self as standing on the top of a mountain, grounding yourself to the earth.
- Crescent Moon – (1 minute)-As you reach up to the sky, imagine sending energy from the center of the ear to the sun.
- Mountain – (2 minutes)- Lead the kids to thinking about being a mountain; grounded and strong. Perhaps, have them think of mountains they have heard about, seen, or climbed and encourage them to visualize themselves climbing these mountains; placing one foot in front of the other grounding them further into the mountain with each step.
- Dancer – (1 minute)- Either you can hold on to the image of a mountain, or practice changing the imagine in your minds-visualizing a tall tree, a rock, and so on, and notice whether it has a effect on your balance; on ability to be grounded.
- Chair – (1 minute)-Visualize your feet secure and grounded into the earth.
- Child’s Pose – (1 minute)- As your taking a break, continue to visualize your heart grounding itself closer and closer to the earth.
- Partner Pull – (2 minutes)- Visualize yourself grounding your feet to the earth so that you can firmly and strongly hold your partner.
- Block Creek – (20 minutes)-I will have students pretend they are crossing a swift river. When a student steps off the block, they are out of the game. Also, have the students be “trolls” in the water that growl at them and try to throw them off (no touching) as they cross the creek and then switch roles. Afterward, encourage the students to provide feedback as to their strategies they used to get across the creek and/or how they did not get thrown off by the trolls.
Calm
- Back Breathing – (5 minutes)
- Relaxation – (5 minutes) – Re-read Mindful Moment Card on Grounding.
- Chime