lunes, 2 de mayo de 2016

My yogi bibliography

I am a psychologist who graduated in 2005. After that, I started my academic training in child therapy taking courses on music therapy, language therapy, learning problems, and play therapy. Also I chose an alternative training to learn different techniques to help children and show their parents how to manage tantrums, anxiety, and stress through breathing and corporal movement. Therefore, I got certified in Miniyoga® in 2010.  During my Miniyoga® training, I fell in love with yoga.  I realized how it helped me with my body alignment, flexibility, balance, and strength and changed the way I saw life.  I also fell in love with teaching yoga to kids because it is fun, relaxed, creative, and helpful. Rainbow Kids Yoga also certified me in 2011 as well as Yokid in 2015.
      Following my goal to improve my yoga knowledge and continue with my training, I did the 200RYT certification with Andrew Eppler at Ashtanga Yoga Studio in Norman, Oklahoma in 2016. After this yoga teacher training my commitment to teach yoga to different ages fortified.
Besides those activities, I am a dancer; I took my first dance class when I was 17 years old. I have taken courses on contemporary dance, flamenco, belly dance, and nowadays I dance ballet. This is another reason why Yoga has been an excellent complement to my lifestyle.
I have been teaching yoga to kids since 2010.




miércoles, 7 de octubre de 2015

Yoga with kiddos at home


I believe that yoga is not exclusively to practice in a yoga studio, so I will talk about how we can enjoy yoga at home and I will share some books that I think are really helpful for parents to do yoga with their kids.

Trust yourself

If you have taken a yoga class, you know about yoga postures. Maybe you are not an expert, or you don’t know the names of the poses in Sanskrit, or you don’t do postures perfectly. But the only way to become better at something is to practice. Therefore, I highly recommend practicing yoga in a funny way with the kids at home. It doesn’t matter if you know a lot of yoga or not. You can start with very simple poses that you feel confortable with.  For example: During mornings you can do few sun salutations with your favorite music, as a morning routine with your kiddos. Another way could be doing yoga poses with your kids in afternoons before or after the homework. There are very good books with games and activities for doing this. Also, you can adapt almost any game that your kids like doing into yoga poses.
Books:
Yoga Games for Children by Daniel Bersma
The Yoga Zoo Adventure by Helen Purperhart

Trust yourself and your yoga practice; trust what you learn in your yoga class. These books are really helpful tools to do yoga with your kids at home or in any place that you want to have a great time.

Respect    
Yoga flows naturally in kids, sometimes they don’t do the perfect postures but actually we never do a perfect posture at the beginning. So, we should keep in mind that this is not a proper yoga class; it is only practicing yoga in a beautiful environment with family. That’s why I recommend respecting kids while they are doing yoga, unless you feel that your kid could be hurt.  Of course, you can show them how to do the pose but if the kids are doing the best that they can, criticizing them could hurt their self-esteem or trigger rejection of yoga. Yoga cards are excellent sources for the kids, so they can see how the posture is and imitate it. On the other hand if your kids are taking yoga classes you also could respect what they have learned. Also you can learn from them.
Flash cards and games:

Yoga Pretzels (yoga cards) by Tara Guber, Lea Kalish, Sophie Fatus
Yoga Planet (yoga cards) by Tara Guber, Lea Kalish
Yogi Card Game by Upside Down game
Memoyoga by Upside down game

Relaxation

Kids love relaxation! Really, who doesn’t?  There are some techniques to relax; the most common that we practice in yoga is the last part of the class, when we lie down on the floor for few minutes.  We can do this simple activity at home; we can add relaxing music, incenses, candles, and essential oils. We don’t need to pay an expensive spa to relax, we can create a specific moment to relax at home, maybe after the shower or before the nap or before we fall asleep.   Also, massage is a great way to relax.  Breathing is another way to relax, the books and the yoga cards that I mentioned before also contain relaxation activities and breathing techniques. Another book with beautiful relaxation techiniques is Ready..Set..R.E.L.A.X. by Allen and Klein.