Introducing Charlotte, Certified Grounded Kid…and her yoga perspective
I introduce to you, Charlotte, Certified Grounded Kid. This is her fifth year in the Fernbank Elementary after-school yoga club and is one of my greatest teachers.
Yoga
My name is Charlotte Walker. I have been taking yoga since I was 5.
It’s always been fun but I didn’t realize how important it is to me, until this year.
Most girls around the age of 9 start to notice things getting complicated especially in friendship.
Even if it’s not happening specifically to you, you still see other girls getting teased or left out for the strangest reason.
But yoga is a place where people can be theirselves not worrying about what others think.
It’s also where you can simply relax and think of the positives.
Overall to me yoga is a place where I can go, even after a rough day, to just breathe.
Charlottes Bio:
Charlotte Walker is your average fourth grade girl. After school she does gymnastics, reading bowl, and of course yoga. Charlotte lives in Atlanta Georgia with her parents, her brother, her sister, her dogs, and her rabbits.
{editor note: Charlotte wrote this. We do not find her ‘average’ at all but admire her humility. 🙂 }
Our children have an opinion and I feel it is important for them to be heard. In my classes I welcome discussion and I let my students know that their opinions matter. Yesterday’s classes were magically healing. My Thursday morning class at LEAD Homeschool in Avondale Estates started off the day with heart opening poses…
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.
Oh Ethiopia, how quickly you stole my heart! I originally set off on the journey to Africa to provide art therapy based art classes through a local non-profit in Atlanta called drawchange. The goal was to expose a group of impoverished children to art and allow them to express themselves through a variety of art…
I have been working with Ken, this is true. I have found him to be a natural adept; I leave him seated, sometimes in the morning, I come back, he has not moved an inch – he is completely absorbed in the mantra. I asked him what his experience was like, and he just stared at me, said nothing: obviously it is beyond the ability to verbalize at the shtula level. Pure transcendence. I even at one point stuck a pin in his foot and held a BIC lighter to his head – he did not flinch. Incredible. He is an amazing meditator.
Sedef Dion, co-creator of the Pre-Grounded Kids program, is interviewed in an article entitled “Peaceful Kids” in the Alpharetta Lifestyle magazine.
Grounded Kids Yoga 115 Milton Park Court, Alpharetta, GA 30022
Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Grounded Kids Yoga provides in-person and online training, professional development workshops, and ongoing support for educators, parents, and clinicians. We specialize in kids yoga, mindfulness, social-emotional learning (SEL), trauma and pain management, emotional regulation, and impulse control for preschool through high school students. Each year, we serve thousands of children and teens through school programs, after-school enrichment yoga clubs, summer camps, Girl Scouts, 4-H conferences, and yoga studios across Atlanta, the Southeast, and nationwide.
My name is Charlotte Walker. I have been taking yoga since I was 5. 
Charlotte Walker is your average fourth grade girl. After school she does gymnastics, reading bowl, and of course yoga. Charlotte lives in Atlanta Georgia with her parents, her brother, her sister, her dogs, and her rabbits.
