Category: Yoga

Yoga Cat: Free Download

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Looking for a little in-home inspiration?

The quarantine cycles are real and I find myself drifting between extreme bursts of creativity and heavy lethargy. The past week has been a bit brighter and I want to share some of its fruits with you all.

Meet Yoga Cat —  your guide through a 20-30 min at home yoga practice for 3 to 10 year-olds. This little printable yoga book was created for those at home looking to incorporate some playful movement with their children.

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Using a visual aid for yoga is especially helpful with children under the age of seven or for those who are trying yoga for the first time. Try printing it in color, cutting each page in half and binding for a little yoga break in your child’s day. You can also print the book in black and white and let them color it in and add their own personal details.

With repetition, you may find your little one sharing poses with you throughout the day.

❤ It’s FREE, fun and filled with love for you and yours.

Download it now: 

Yoga Cat Color &  Play Book

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Sun Salutations

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We often get asked by our parents, “What’s that song, the one with the sun in it that my child can’t stop singing.” It never fails to bring a smile to our lips as we know instantaneously exactly what they are referring to.

The answer?

It’s Dance for the Sun by Kira Wiley, our very favorite way to teach one of the most fundamental set of postures in traditional yoga asana in a fun and child-friendly way.

Sun Salutations are a part of both the Hatha & Ashtanga yoga lineages and have been incorporated into most schools of yoga today. They include a slightly variable set of yoga poses linked by breath to create a smooth circuit of prana (life energy) running throughout the body. Simply put, Sun Salutations help warm up the body, increase the heart rate, and create heat needed for deeper and stronger yoga poses that follow in the practice.

For children, Sun Salutations can be an essential landmark or focal point for the children to grab onto during a yoga class. Students who have heard the song many times before may feel comfortable singing and will link the movements automatically with ease while newer students may enjoy listening and following along their peers and the teacher.

It’s a fun and easy way to engage children in traditional practice without requiring a lot of teaching or modelling.

plank

 

How to practice: 

For a little context watch this video of one of our class practices.

  • Do a light warm-up of the joints in the body especially the wrists and ankles.
  • If students are new you can take a moment before to introduce:
    • Mountain Pose
    • Forward Fold
    • Plank
    • Cobra
    • Down Dog 
  • Play the song: Dance for the Sun by Kira Wiley.
  • Follow the movements as directed by the song

Cobra pose

Benefits:

Yoga pose vinyasa:  The sun salutation is a group of yoga poses linked together by breath to create a sequence of movement. It is the only traditional part of the physical yoga practice that traditionally promotes cardio-vascular health.

Sequencing: Learning postures in sequence helps develop memory function as well as coordination and problem solving.

Rhythmic breathing alleviates stress, oxygenates the brain, strengthen lung capacity and builds respiratory endurance.

Yoga poses: help build good posture habits, stabilize the core, strengthen the extremities and develop balance.

mountain

Try it out at home and let us know what you think!

Interested in learning more about sharing the practice of yoga for children? Learn more about our training programs here.

Yoga at Home: warm-up song

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Today we’re sharing our favorite song for creating the space for our yoga classes, “Rub your Hands” by Karma Kids Yoga.

* Ask your kiddos to find their yoga seats and settle into a comfortable seated position with lots of room around their bodies. They can sit on the floor, a yoga mat or a pillow for a bit more support. Offer them variations of their yoga seat like cross-legged pose (Sukhasana), Hero’s Pose (Virasana) or Half Lotus (Padmasana).

* Talk with them about practicing yoga, what it means and create some safety agreements before you begin.

* Start the song and do a motion for each part of the song: you don’t need to explain the motions, just demonstrate and your little yogis should be able to follow along.

– “Rub your hands” – Rub hands together creating friction and warmth.

– “Sit up tall” – Lightly press hands into knees, lengthen the spine and roll shoulders down.

– “Take a deep breath” – Bring hands to prayer pose, close eyes and inhale to allow chest to expand and shoulders to rise.

– “Om” – Exhale by chanting the sound “Om” bring hands back to knees.

 

* After a few times, you can vary motions to include side bends, forward folds, any poses you like. This works especially well with older kids who may tire of the repetition of sitting in cross-legged pose for an extended amount of time.

 

Benefits:

Chanting helps develop concentration, calm the nervous system, and helps bring balance to the body.

Rhythmic breathing alleviates stress, oxygenates the brain, strengthen lung capacity and build respiratory endurance.

Yoga poses help build good posture habits, stretch the knee joints and build flexibility and strength.

Try it out and let us know what you think!

,
Kru Rosie

More opportunities to join us!

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We’ve been listening to the input of our families and are ready to bring some adjustments to our weekday schedule. Starting October 9th 2019, Kids Yoga Garden will be open for full day activities each Wednesday – Sunday, giving you more opportunities to join us each week.

The weekday activities will be geared towards our home school learning group with options to study 2-5 days per week. All days will be open to drop-ins but members of the homeschool group will have priority booking to ensure our regular learning group is able to thrive.

 

Oct schedule.png

 

This is our first major schedule change since opening and we hope that it will bring more fluidity and consistency to our staff and families. Monday and Tuesday our office will be closed but prior bookings for private sessions may be made during our regular office hours Wednesday – Friday 8 am – 4 pm and Saturday and Sunday 9 am – 5 pm.

Leading up to this shift we will take a 1 week break to reset and prepare.

 

Aug-Dec 2019

Please let us know any requests or questions leading up to these shifts!

❤

Summer of PLAY

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This month we are open each and every day to give you lots of opportunities to try something new, hone creativity and enjoy movement. Our weekday activities are completely booked but we welcome you to come join our weekend workshops which will feature a blend of traditional Thai cooking, baking, crafting, tie dying and more.  As this will be a busy time, please send us a message or email to reserve places for your children.

Click the photos to join our Facebook Events!

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Family time for connection

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We know that you are busy, between work, home life, school and after school activities. There’s a whole lot happening week to week to keep track of and with all the bustle, we often lose track of the connection that makes it all worth while. Family yoga is a great time to connect and share with your own family and build healthy traditions that can anchor your week. Check out this article in the Charlotte Observer for more benefits of practicing yoga as a family.

 

Our Family Yoga Circle is each Thursday afternoon 3:45 – 5 pm is the perfect chance come as you are for a laid-back playful circle created especially for families of 1-3 year olds. This is a no pressure environment for families of littles who are looking for a way to joyfully bond with their child and make connections with other families.

Mom n' MeCircle

For families of older kiddos, we welcome you to our family yoga class Sunday evenings 5-6 pm. This class is suited best for families of 4-10 year olds and will teach yoga basics intertwined with themes and stories.

Family Yoga Sundays

 

For families of younger and upper teens, we recommend booking private or group sessions on weekday or weekend evenings.

 

“Yoga emphasizes the power of connection; connecting movement with breath, connecting in with the self, and connecting with others.”

  • -Margot Brinley-

June Workshops

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It’s a new month and we are ready to make, move and create our way all the way to summer camp. In addition to our weekly classes on Tuesday and Thursdays, we have special weekend camp workshops each weekend in June. Join us for one or all of them by sending us a message to reserve your place.

Children ages 3-10 are welcome.

 

Sushi workshopOats WorkshopLanna Lantern Workshop

orange scones workshopflower offering workshop - CopyAcro yoga workshop

Upcoming Break Camps

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March & April Break Camps (1)

Plenty of active and creative fun awaits kiddos at Kids Yoga Garden Break Camps. We will start off with super hero and rainbow themes explored through science, art, yoga, zumba, cooking, science and more.

Ages: 3-10

Cost: 4,000 thb / 1 week, 7,500 thb / 2 weeks

*Returning families receive a special 500 thb discount when they register by March 15th!

Yoga at the Project World School Summit

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Living in a small transient city demands a nature of flexibility necessary to ride the waves of hellos, goodbyes and bumping into dear friends in public places at every turn. Every season we get to meet new sorts of travelers in our learning space and offer them a place to connect with our community that is in constant practice of inclusion.

In fact, this has become a very audible practice as we end our yoga classes with a chorus of thank you’s from all the languages present. Among the languages are also different learning styles, those that attend traditional school and visit us on the weekend, those that are a part of our homeschool group, those that are parts of nomadic families and world schooling their way around the globe, those that are on school breaks. Yoga, along with our other creative workshops, helps us establish connection with our bodies and others in shared space. It’s a foundation on which we can encourage non violence, truthfulness, and other values that foster community.

This fall we were honored to team up with Project World School to bring some yoga into their week long kids camp and summit in Chiang Mai. Thanks to Sarah Lorimer Photography for these beautiful snaps that peer into the world of a kids yoga class with students from around the world.

 

 

 

Cleaning up our space
Om
Chanting
Finding body parts
Downward Dog
Sun Salutations
Leaves of the same vine
Monkey see, monkey do
Trees in the breeze

A class for the teachers

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It’s happening. Kids Yoga Garden is about to host a course that I’ve been dreaming up for years now. A course that demystifies the world of “kids yoga,” a course that taps into the inner child joy in all of us, a course that is accessible to people from all sorts of backgrounds due to translators, compassionate facilitation, and affordability.

Join us for an Introduction to Teaching Kids Yoga: An Intensive Workshop September 29-30 2018 for all this, and much more. As a co-founder of Kids Yoga Garden I’ve gathered the essential building blocks for understanding this world and relating it to different audiences to create new spaces for community and interaction. I cannot wait to share it with you.

 

Jai Thep Festival 2018

The course will cover :

 

1. What is Yoga for children? 

Participants will learn the benefits of kids yoga and how to articulate those benefits to adults. We will learn ways to explain yoga to children and get tips on age appropriate development focuses.

2. How to a create safe and engaging learning environment: 

Learn techniques for classroom management, how to set the space and foster growth despite the busy atmosphere of a kindergarten / primary level classroom. How do we set expectations that create safety for all participants with freedom to be as one needs to be? This section of the course will deal directly with these questions.

3. Identify age appropriate yoga asanas (poses): 

Dive into the structure of poses and examine the language used to bring them to life for our students. We will discuss the kind of adjustment and modeling that is appropriate for these ages and start to think about the energetic and physical results of said movements.

4. Guiding mindfulness and meditation techniques: 

Learn to guide child-focused meditations and games which can help foster inner quiet and peace. Explore props and music that can be used to signal quiet times and reflection.

5. Creating Storytelling Yoga Lessons:

One of the most effective way to immerse children into a yoga class is by bringing them through a storyline or adventure. This section of the course will enable the discovery of the energetic arch of a class and begin to place asanas into an order that starts and begins with mindful moments for meaningful exploration. We will discuss themes, books and music that bring the imagination into the yoga class.

Workshop black and white. png

Course Times: 

Saturday and Sunday September 29-30, 9 am – 5 pm

Investment:

Regular: 5,000 THB

Early bird (before September 7): 4,000 THB

 

Upon completion of this course, attendees will be awarded certificates for the 16 hour course. Further opportunities like class shadowing lead teachers and additional workshops will follow.