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

Charlotte 1 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 portraitCharlotte 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

  • Roadmap to Lucidity

    Or
    The map to LUCIDITY
    Inspired by Yoga Sutra 1.33 which reads:

    maitri karuna mudita upeksanam sukha duhkha punya apunya
    visayanam bhavanatah cittaprasadanam

    The map to LUCIDITY?
    YES! Have you heard?
    Takes four states to get there~
    Not that absurd.

    The first is of FRIENDSHIP
    toward those who are happy.
    Even when you feel distant,
    resistance and slappy.

    The second is of COMPASSION
    toward those in distress.
    Tough when annoyed,
    imposed on and stressed.

    The third is of JOY
    toward those who are good
    through roadblocks of useless
    and misunderstood.

    The fourth is of EQUANIMITY
    toward those who are foul
    who are lacking in virtue,
    and react with a growl.

    Here in our mapping
    Four residents are mentioned.
    How we perceive them
    Is our fierce contention.

    Our attitudes we go for
    From composure to kind~
    Get us closer to LUCIDITY
    Where we STABILIZE our mind.

    Memorize these four~
    And observe in daily life.
    During times of quiet,
    Noise, and even strife.

    So buckle up~
    And prepare for a ride~
    To align your attitude,
    And try the untried.

    Close your eyes~
    Feel the state you are in~
    Soften your heart~
    your throat, and your skin.

    Drop your breath
    right into your heart~
    It’s made up of LOVE~
    And that’s where you start.

    Inhale with the thought~
    May I be friendly~
    Exhale with the thought~
    May I give friendship.
    .

    May I be COMPASSIONATE
    with your next inhale
    May I give COMPASSION
    with your next exhale.

    Inhale with the thought~
    May I have JOY~
    Exhale with the thought~
    May I give JOY.

    May I have EQUANIMITY
    with your inhale.
    May I give CALMNESS
    with your exhale.

    When someone comes to mind
    Offer these prayers
    No matter their issues,
    Their stains, or their stares.

    May you be LOVING~
    May you be LOVED ~
    May you be PEACEFUL~
    May you give PEACE~

    Your states of envy and mean
    Get smaller each time~
    Intolerance is removed
    You get closer to SUBLIME.

    Once your mind is CLEAR,
    And you’re CENTERED and FREE
    Skillfulness in ACTION
    Will be … Will be~

  • Peace On Earth Puzzle

    earthday_1As Earth Day approaches this year, I am struck by what it means to truly foster Peace on this planet. I remember as a child, learning about anti-nuclear protestors who chained themselves to fences and were forcibly removed and jailed. These brave souls became my heroines and heroes in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. I was moved to tears singing Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” and hearing stories of civil disobedience and the message of non-violent resistance. Later in the 1990’s, when I danced barefoot on my very first Earth Day, a lump would form in my throat when I celebrated each small victory (and the Gigantic Hearts) of environmental protestors who sacrificed so much to save a single tree and worked to preserve open space for our children’s children. Peace.

  • Meet Keira and Kendall

    Hi, my name is Keira and I have been doing yoga for 4 years. It has been a great experience. Yoga has helped me calm down when I’m mad. Yoga makes me feel peaceful. Practicing yoga has helped me a lot by calming me down and making me more flexible. It’s fun learning new poses and helping others earn their bandanas. I wish I had started earlier. I had fun earning my bandanas, and if you do yoga, I hope that you’ll have fun earning yours.

    Kendall Kiera
    Hi! My name is Kendall, I’m 12 years old, and I have been doing yoga for four years. In these four short years, yoga has become a huge part of my life.
    From taking a deep breath before yelling at my mom or sister, teaching friends for my green bandana, to even making up flows of my own, I love every part of yoga. I especially enjoy the way I feel after class and the feeling I get from helping younger kids earn their own bandanas.
    Yoga has been a steady part of my life, always helping me through a difficult week, a bad grade, or friend and family problems. I hope to continue to practice and learn as I get older.

  • The Okey Dokey Yogi

    On The Path2

    inspired by Dr. Seuss’s Sutra: the Zax and Patanjali’s Sutra: yatha abhimata dhyanadva (Chapter 1, v. 39)

    One day, making Okeys
    In the mountain of Dokey,
    Posed a West-Going Yogi
    And an East-Going Yogi.

    {See, an Okey is approval,
    An endorsement as such.
    Each yogi seeked okeys
    So very much.}

    And it happened that both of them posed in a place
    Where they bumped. There they stood.
    Foot to foot. Face to face.

    “Look here, now!” the West-Going Yogi said. “I say!
    You are blocking my mind. You are right in my way.
    I’m a West-Going Yogi and I always think west.
    Get out of my way, now, and let me do best!”

    “Who’s in whose way?” snapped the East-Going Yogi.
    “I always think east, making east-going okeys.
    So you’re in MY way! And I ask you to move.
    And let me go east in my east-going groove.

    Then the West-Going Yogi puffed his chest up with pride.
    “I never,” he said, “take a step to one side,
    And I’ll prove to you that I won’t change my ways
    If I have to keep posing here thirty-nine days!”

    “And I’ll prove to YOU,” yelled the West-Going Yogi,
    “That I can pose here in the mountain of Dokey
    for thirty-nine years! For I live by a mantra
    that I learned way back in West-Going Tantra.
    “Still the mind! That’s my mantra. Still the mind is the best!
    I’ll pose here, quite still! I can and I will
    If it makes you and me and the whole world stand still.

    Hey… said East-Going Yogi
    I learned that as well.
    Let’s check yoga sutras
    Won’t that be swell?

    Chapter1, verse 39
    to be quite exact.
    Focus on things that
    you won’t find distract.

    There are numbers of ways
    For the mind to become still.
    Focus on what you please
    To Fulfill!

    It is the process of focus
    Which makes us a yogi
    Not the specific practice
    You see, Okey-Dokey?

    Patanjali says to practice
    Right from the heart
    Allow this to deepen,
    For that is the art.

    Fix the mind!
    Any object you choose,
    As a focusing prop to
    Fully fix and bemuse.

    Get absorbed in your focus,
    Without distraction.
    You can attain stillness
    And sweet satisfaction.

  • Hi Barbie…It’s Me Ken!

    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.

    Ken-Letter