Spiritual Gangster

This is a memory game.  The object of the game is to turn over pairs of matching chips. Concentration can be played with any number of players or alone. You will need two tubes of the Grounded Pose Chips. Decide how many poses to include in the game based on the number of players and…

GROUNDED. (ADJ.)

1. HAVING A SECURE FEELING OF BEING IN TOUCH WITH REALITY AND YOUR PERSONAL FEELINGS.

2. A FIRM FOUNDATION TO BE INSPIRED AND INSPIRE OTHERS.

Two weeks ago my Grounded class wrote letters of congratulations to Emily, who had just earned her White Bandana. She’s nine years old and lives in Atlanta. The kids in my class were amazed that at just nine she had achieved this. They were inspired. The letters they wrote were thoughtful, complementary and from the heart.

We chant OM in order to ground our energy in the present moment. When teaching kids who are brand new to yoga, I am determined to invite them into the wondrous world of all that is yoga without pushing them into a place of spooky sounds, weird ways and stuff completely unrelated to anything they’ve ever known. This mantra is a mode of transportation from where we were in our individual lives moments ago to where we are now – together in yoga

  Want to build your positive mind? Feel bright in every which way? Breathe in BIG and stretch real wiiiiiiiiide Exhale a Yippee Ki Yay!

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.