Introducing Storytelling and Yoga to Early Childhood Educators

Deirdre Englehart, Ph.D. teaches early childhood educators how to use story and yoga in their preschool classrooms.

Storytelling is gaining more and more traction as educators see its value in teaching everything, including yoga for kids! Yoga in itself is so valuable to kids that it's become very popular of late.

I was invited to help present at "A Story to Tell" facilitated by Deirdre Englehart, Ph.D. and faculty member at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. The professional development workshop introduced the combined value of yoga and stories to educate kids in a playful and healthy way using an Ocean Stories theme. Englehart drew upon her Irish background to tell the story of the Seal Maiden and used a traditional song as a repetitive element in the story to insert yoga postures that the teachers tried.

Little kids love making up their own stories with yoga!

I used the Russian story of The Golden Fish that I turned into a rhyming chant that also included a song that involved audience participation and use of the body. Many kids yoga teachers include yoga poses during the telling of the story, however, I prefer to tell the story in its entirety to develop deep listening and concentration in kids so that they can sink into the trance-like state where the story takes them. Then I teach story structure by asking kids what the story is about. Who is the main character? A fisherman! What does he do? Find a fish. What happens next? And so on. Then we do the yoga poses corresponding to the story section. This allows for the internalization of beginning, middle and end, which play therapists say is necessary for kids to have in order to learn.

I finished by telling the ancient Egyptian story of the Shipwrecked Sailor from my book The Treasure in Your Heart: Stories and Yoga for Peaceful Children. It was another example of the power of story as yoga, teaching wisdom and yoga philosophy of courage and attention, taking kids vicariously on a heroic journey. The story teaches kids to deal with stress when disaster strikes by finding an island within oneself. This is where yoga becomes Raja yoga and not just asana. The power of wisdom stories for kids go straight to the heart.

Early childhood educators make up stories using yoga.

Teachers were then instructed how to excite kids to make up their own stories using yoga postures by using yoga cards. Teachers then told the yoga story with their body. Many teachers had never done any yoga and this session was their first experience with it. They learned how to use a published story book to teach yoga too. They all received a free yoga mat to continue their practice at home and to try out stories and yoga in their preschool classrooms and all were entranced by the power of stories to use in the classroom.