[currentuser role=”instructor_level”]
Instructor: Anne Byer
Community: Middle School Students with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, School Setting, 45 minutes
Plan Creation Date: March 3, 2015
Yoga Calm Principle/Lesson Goal: Grounding
Lesson Plan:
Calm
- Belly Breathing – with Hoberman Sphere (ask for student volunteer to move the sphere as Anne talks)
- Focus on filling your lungs by breathing in through your nose, pause slighty
- Focus on emptying your lungs slowing by exhaling through your nose
- Feel your belly expand as your breath in
- Feel it get closer to your spine as your exhale
- Repeat 5x
- Child’s Pose – Feel your weight rest into the mat and relax your head and neck. Let the ground support your weigh and relax your body.
Activate
- Mountain – Imagine being a tall, big mountain. Wind, rain, storms, nothing can move your mountain. It’s tall and firm.
- Roots – make small circles with your trunk to the right. Slowly make them bigger. Notice whether or not it’s easier to keep your balance when you are making small or circles or when you are making larger circles. Now make circles to the left- first starting small and then getting better. Now imagine growing deep strong roots into the ground. Imagine a bag of sand on your feet, keep you close to the earth, grounded and unmovable.
- Tree – Keep your right leg grounded and take your left leg up your right leg and balance. Remember to imagine the sand bag gently and solidly keep your right leg grounded. If you have the balance bring your hands together at the center of your chest. If you have that balance, grow your branches toward the sky, activating the limbs of your tree upward while staying firmly balanced on your right leg. Feel the lift in your body and what it feels like to reach for the sky. Repeat on the left leg.
- Mountain/Upward Mountain – reestablish your deep roots into the ground. Lift your trunk upward as you raise your hands into upward mountain.
- Chair – feel the soles of your feet firmly in the ground as move into chair. Tell yourself “my legs are strong, my body is strong, I can do this”
- Repeat Mountain- Chair 3 x
- Downward Dog – Spread your palms as wide as possible, feeling the earth below you, feeling grounded into the mat and activitating your palms throughout your finger tips.
- Mountain Pose – with a focus on strong base
- Triangle – to the right- activate the side of your body extending to the opposite wall as much as your can, and raise your left hand strongly toward the ceiling. Feel the energy extending through your arm, wrist and fingers. Hold for 10 seconds. Tell yourself: “My body is strong, my mind is strong, I can do this.” Repeat on the Left Side.
- Downward Dog – activate wide palms on the mat, extended strongly through your hands, and up the side of your body while reaching your heels toward your mat.Easy Seated Pose: Facilitate discussion on feeling grounded
Calm
- Child’s Pose – feel the mat and earth support your weight. Let your head and neck relax.
- Relaxation – Corpse Pose – Distribute stone to anyone who wants it. Place stone on diaphragm. Lead a body scan with instruction on relaxing muscles into the mat. Not needing to support your body. Progressive guided focus on relaxing muscles in feet, legs, stomach, throat, tongue, and eyebrows. Bring attention to breath and feeling the stone move up and down with inhalation and exhalation. Imagine the roots of a tree deep in the earth and even the strongest storm can’t uproot the tree. Who in your life is your roots? What activities in your life feel like roots? Stay 5 minutes