Reflections after teaching Step 1 Training – See It From My Side

See It From My Side

Written by Amy Haysman

It’s Monday after 3 days of grounding 17 grown ups in the art and design of teaching kids yoga Grounded style. I lean back in my chair at lunch, unable to carry on a conversation, and say to Sedef “I’m drained.” Instantly, my body recognized this as untrue. I realize that, while feeling a bit sore and empty of words, I was oh so very full.

You see, our kids yoga teacher trainings are a culmination of decades of being alive, most of which have been spent by either being kids, acting like kids, listening to kids, teaching kids in the classroom or raising (outstanding) kids. We offer experience. You’ll be generously set up with tried and true original techniques and materials rooted in ancient yoga traditions.

Because of ALL the work and creative energy, love and purpose driven intention that we have poured into Grounded Kids Yoga since 2008, we’ve carved a space in this industry that attracts THE most whole-heartedly eager people on the planet.

This brings me back to feeling full… More like overflowing with enthusiasm for this work of teaching yoga to children.

Being with step 1ers has a special way of bringing me back to the beginning when words like chakra and Namaste were scary like having a crush and sounds of Chrystal bowls and mantras were as unfamiliar as my own inner landscape.

I hear their questions and remember the urgency to make a difference and the wide-open possibilities because nothing was certain. I look into their eyes and remember when I too wasn’t sure that yoga worked and the utter amazement I felt each time, and time again, when it did.

It’s hard to say goodbye when it’s over. I’ve been whispered to in a hug or through tears more than a few times that this training was more informative and spiritually awakening than their 200 hour. And how profound it is to have the craving for a supportive, forward acting community finally satisfied. We stay in touch to put it mildly.

I share at the start of each step 1 that it is by no mistake that we are together; that this training would not be the same without them. While our training curriculum is down to a fine science, the main ingredient is Authenticity. We teach you to be yourself. Not an entertaining yoga teachy version of yourself, but your true self.

AND we teach you how to be a very skillful and successful children’s yoga teacher.

This is what fills me up. What about you?

Just Breath. Teacher leading the students and practicing what she teaches.
Lotus Breath reminds us that even in the darkest, muddiest times – we can rise up!
The Wave. Steady Feet, Light Heart – Prepares us to go with the flow.

More to Explore

  • Moving on….

    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…

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

    horse

    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  –