by Hariyah dan-Fodio

Master Certified Storytime Yoga® Teacher

As our nation moves toward the focused intervention of developing targeted programs that promote nurturing environments for children, we as Storytime Yoga practitioners are in a prime position to help facilitate this effort. Storytime Yoga sessions characterize all of the elements of nurturing environments.

Storytime Yoga sessions teach, promote, and richly reinforce prosocial behavior. In regard to the Storytime Yoga experience, the Queen of Bohemia, Sydney Solis, shares that by listening to each other’s mythology in a peaceful, non-judgmental and loving way people from all over the world can be united in healing and understanding. The Storytime Yoga experience creates nurturing environments through the sharing of stories which ignite universal consciousness around the constructs of love, joy, and peace.

Storytime Yoga practitioners monitor participant behavior and know how to creatively and effectively intervene to prevent misbehavior. Sessions are conducted in the spirit of loving kindness and creativity and always begin with firm, yet respectful, establishment of basic ground rules which help participants learn how to better self-monitor and thus gain maximum benefit and enjoyment from the Storytime Yoga experience.

What I like most about Storytime Yoga is that it promotes heightened psychological flexibility benefiting the teller and listener alike. The stories and movement shared during Storytime Yoga sessions help children develop mindful, value-based ways of being that are shared by people all over the world. The characters in the stories, tales, legends, and myths shared are similar in that they act in the service of their values--helping others, learning from mistakes, sharing and working collectively, giving, striving, loving and forgiving.

The movement (yoga) aspect of Storytime Yoga helps participants gain psychological flexibility through a mind body connection that is enhanced as participants make connections to the story through the body and go deeper into a story’s context and meaning. Through this interactive encounter Storytime Yoga participants so easily get in touch with, notice, and process their thoughts and feelings as thoughts and feelings.

The anecdotes shared during Storytime Yoga give participants a vast resource from which to draw from when faced with personal challenges of their own. They are able to better externalize what they are going through as opposed to internalizing. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH) externalizing problems has therapeutic value and children may benefit most from interventions focused on preventing the internalizing of problems.

The process of weaving a tale together, retelling, and moving with and into a story through yoga movement, dance, puppetry, and game activities helps all participants, especially the children, learn how to develop a more nurturing interpersonal style that promotes and fosters more loving and nurturing communication with self and others.

“The more nurturers in the world the better the world will be.”

Children and adults who engage in the Storytime Yoga experience the opportunity to be nurtured through storying and movement and thus learn how to better nurture themselves and others. That’s why I love Storytime Yoga!