Instructor: Suzette Hayes
Community: Grades K-8, School Setting, 60 minutes
Plan Creation Date: May 1, 2016
Yoga Calm Principle/Lesson Goal: Strength
Lesson Plan:
Calm
- Belly Breathing – Sitting up tall and strong with your spine, focus on your breath.
- Pulse Count
- Volcano Breath - Strong hands together at chest for the base of your volcano. Feet rooted in the earth all four corners planted down. Upon exhalation, send strong thoughts to others around you in the class.
Activate
- Woodchopper – Experiment with different vocalizations to push out breath. I always model “huuh” but maybe someone has a different expression!
- Mountain – Standing strong and body activated. Teacher tries to “push” students over and exclaims how strong their stance is.
- Warrior Flow – Practice the following 3 times, holding each pose for eight drum beats. Star, Warrior II (left), Star, Chair, Warrior II (right) Star, Mountain When students are in warrior have them say something that ends the sentences “I am…” “I am strong”, “I am smart”, etc.
- Bubble Game – Explain that strength can be both physical and mental. We just did some work on our physical strength, now we are going to work on our mental strength. Invite students to sit in a circle and start blowing bubbles. Don’t give them any directions, have fun with it, and watch as the kids have fun popping the bubbles, etc. After everyone has had a chance to be a little silly, stop and tell them now they are going to work on their mental strength. The challenge is now to see if they can sit perfectly still while a bubble floats around them. Let everyone have a turn at this and talk about what strategy they used to not act on their impulse. See if they can connect it to other times in their lives (classroom, church, other times when they need to sit still).
Calm
- Strong Voice – Depending upon age/ability either do this as an independent or group activity.
- Relaxation Script – focus on visual image to help them focus and relax, Ready Set Relax, pg 104.