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Teens

  • 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.

  • Spiritual Gangster

    Grounded Rap By Carlos, 8th grade Spiritual Gangster Yoga is the best, so don’t put it to the test. Yoga is better than the rest. It helps you breathe through your chest. Now just go wit da flow and don’t mess wit Yoga. It’s so fly it can make a drunk person sober Yoga is…

  • 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 –

  • when something horrible happens

    how do you teach yoga to teens? you start by teaching Truth. speak to the highest in them. they will get it when you tell them that they are a spiritual being in a physical body and that they are immeasurably powerful. when they root their feet into their mat, into the earth in Mountain pose they will feel steady and strong; a steadiness they themselves create becomes a thing they can rely upon. when their feet are rooted into the earth, they will become rooted in their integrity. when they are faced with difficult situations they can breathe into steadiness, root into their integrity and make grounded choices.