Charlotte, a Certified Grounded Kid, kneeling on a studio floor between Cheryl and Amy Haysman, all three smiling

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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. 🙂 }

 

More to Explore

  • Kids Warm to Yoga: How Grounded Kids Yoga Helps Children Thrive Mentally, Physically & Emotionally

    In today’s fast-paced world, yoga may be the one activity kids actually need more of. In this article, Amy Haysman of Grounded Kids Yoga shares how yoga helps children manage stress, build focus, and discover their inner light. From emotional regulation to improved coordination and confidence, yoga offers lifelong tools for kids of all abilities—including those with special needs.

  • Certified to Teach Kids Yoga in Middle School

    Last night felt surreal. I was standing in my kitchen with Lee, Amy & Cheryl when they handed me a single piece of cardstock with the words ‘Certified Grounded Teacher.’ I felt my throat clench and my heart skip a beat. Though I have been teaching Grounded Yoga for over a year, it was this small piece of recognition that let me know that I am now officially recognized as part of one of the greatest movements of my lifetime.
    Once I received my 200hr teacher training in 2012, I had begun leading my daughter’s classes at school once a week and eventually took over the Tween class at my studio. I pulled resources from all around- other teachers, online sites, books, games…everything I could find to help create a well-rounded class. It was a year of growth and some things worked and some failed miserably. What I did know was that I loved teaching children- their honesty in their bodies and mouths and they way it was starting to create a shift in their perspective. My dear friend and teacher, Lee introduced me to Grounded in early 2013 when she came home lit UP from Level 1 training. I watched her do Go To Your Room and that’s literally ALL it took! I knew that something special was going on with Grounded…something that hadn’t been done before…something that was about to change how the world looks at kid’s yoga. We put a plan together to “sell” our yoga program to our school as a full-time yoga curriculum. And it WORKED! I decided to take the Level 1 training just after school started so we could teach the same material and use each other to bounce ideas and begin to try to understand the huge undertaking we’d just landed.

  • Grounded….an Adjective, a Noun, a Verb…Redefining for Real

    Can getting grounded bring me back to balanced working order, the way nature intended me to be? Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) defines GROUNDED as mentally and emotionally stable: admirably sensible, realistic, and unpretentious grounded [?gra?nd?d] adj sensible and down-to-earth; having one’s feet on the ground I do aim to know where I belong in…

  • Inspired by the Velveteen Rabbit…How Teachers Become Real.

    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.
    But the Skin Horse only smiled
    – From the Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams –