I just did a class for fourth grade, at-risk, Lantino girls and the school social worker had asked me to build their self esteem during the class. So I started out with my puppet Lalita doing Spanish and intros to set the stage and center the space. We passed around a little heart stone, as I learned the girls’ names and asked them to say one thing that they are really good at. I then told my little joke I always open with; The Buddha walked up to a hot dog vendor and said, “Make me one with everything!” The hotdog vendor made up a nice dog and handed it to him; the Buddha handed him a five dollar bill. After a while eating, the Buddha said, “Hey! Where is my change?” And the hot dog vendor said, “Change? Change only comes from within!” I said we were going to explore that inner world and that silence……. In ….between…the thoughts.
I then told the story of jewel in the well, and that the well is inside you, available to you for whatever you need. We did meditation and breathing. Then some wram ups, and then I told the story of the cracked pot. Then we did asana. Most girls knew a lot of asana! Amazing how yoga is spreading! And some advanced poses, like warrior III and vashistasana! For relaxation, I told the Japanese myth of Amaterasu, and then at the end, I passed around a large hand mirror (my mother’s) and told them to take a good look at themselves and bring their gifts to the world as Amaterasu, the sun goddess did. I also peppered the time with short things about me as a kid, how I lacked selflove, etc. And it was funny because the woman who hired me I knew from high school, and she was now the social worker. I ran into her 25 years later at my daughter’s orthodontist! Ha! The girls said that what they loved most was…..the STORIES! So remember, the yoga is in the stories! You can tell stories all day and the kids will still get the yoga! In this case I used the cracked pot story as a theme, rather than acting it out. But for them to relish their differences. Their gifts. Like when I was a kid I was really weird, spassy, wild! Well, that’s my gift! I’m a storyteller!