Yoga Snack: Silence!

January 9, 2010 by Eve Costarelli 2 Comments

Wednesday’s Yoga Snack started with a new type of pranyama (breathing) exercise. We started with a deep breath in through our noses and then while exhaling we “hummed” making a buzzing sound like a bee. This is called Bumble Bee Breath. The kids loved how the vibrations of the humming tickled their lips. We did this again and then on the third time, we also blocked our ears with our hands and got to have a buzzing symphony inside our heads. It was a great way to block out all external sounds and only hear yourself. A perfect yogic destination!
Silence…sssshhhhhhhh…”Silence is the relative or total lack of audible sound. By analogy, the word silence may also refer to any absence of communication”. We dedicated today’s Yoga Snack to silence. Silence helps kids to create a deeper understanding of their environment and themselves. I find that the use of asanas (poses), stories, games, songs, laughter and silence all help deepen the children’s perspective of themselves as individuals and as part of a group. Yoga is the perfect vehicle for this. It offers a non-competitive environment where kids can relax together and feel successful and feel happy and energized both as an individual and as part of a whole.
After Bumblebee Breath, we moved onto a series of Kundalini Yoga warm-ups taught to me by Shakta Khalsa: bumpy camel, washing machine (while saying Sat Nam) and dryer. We then lay back on the floor and proceeded to do air walking with our arms stretched over our heads. As we would walk, we would touch each leg with the opposite hand. Cross body actions are especially brain balancing exercises.
Next, Bridge Pose and Candle.
We then hugged our legs in and gave ourselves a satisfying dose of gratitude.
Then happy baby (with some gleeful gag-a-goo-goo’s, hence a good dose of laughter)
Tree pose and once we got our balance, each child took the pose to their full expression.

NA Ma Ste
** The Yoga Snack is a fully integrated class with all children present: typical, non-typical, spectrum kids…One boy who is in the Autism Program at the school who used to have t leave yoga and go to a separate morning meeting is now fully integrated into the morning routine of the class and he is especially happy to be at yoga. For his special writing assignment, where he could write bout anything, he chose to write about yoga class. He writes, “I like laying on the floor in yoga. I was relaxed”. I think that says it all!