It’s Time for Yoga

onthemat • April 3, 2016

When you first start teaching yoga, you prepare, sometimes over prepare, the ways you will begin the class, the sequencing, and short readings during savasana. You consider the length of time, the composition of the students, and the themes you want to follow. It’s even more specific when you teach children or teens with special […]

When you first start teaching yoga, you prepare, sometimes over prepare, the ways you will begin the class, the sequencing, and short readings during savasana. You consider the length of time, the composition of the students, and the themes you want to follow. It’s even more specific when you teach children or teens with special consideration to their stage of development.

So what do you do when you know you are going to teach yoga and meditation to 200+ orphans and Buddhist nuns, many who are teenagers, but that’s all you know? Will we be teaching the children with the adults, or will there be separate yoga sessions for the orphans? I don’t know, but I want to be ready for anything, so I reached out to Tara Rachel Jones, OTM’s very own children’s yoga teacher, for some guidance. Even though I don’t know the who, what and where, after speaking with her, I feel prepared! She so generously shared her teachings with me. I now have a collection of lessons, games, and activities to use.

The beginnings are the same for many yoga classes. We begin by taking our seat, our “Yoga Seat.” With the potential barrier of language, I plan to rely on the Sanskrit of Sukhasana, Vajrasana and Virasana, as I teach the basics of coming into a yoga practice. Of taking a yoga seat, along with the Yoga Seat game for the children so clearly articulated in her book for children, It’s Time for Yoga.

Tara generously donated ten copies of her book for me to take with me, and I know the illustrations and stories here will help me share the gifts of yoga to this wonderful group of girls and women in the monastery.

I look forward to revisiting this topic after I’ve taught, filled with pictures for you!

On The Mat Yoga Blog

Heart~ Day #7 (Week #4)

By Linda Malcomb • May 3, 2020
“There is a light in the core of our being that calls us home—one that can only be seen with closed eyes; We can feel it as a radiance in the center of our chest. This light of loving awareness is always here, regardless of our conditioning. It does not matter how many dark paths we have traveled or how many wounds we have inflicted or sustained as we have unknowingly stumbled toward this inner radiance. It does not matter how long we have sleepwalked, seduced by our desires and fears. This call persists until it is answered, until we surrender to who we really are. When we do, we feel ourselves at home wherever we are. A hidden beauty reveals itself in our ordinary life. As the true nature of our Deep Hear is unveiled, we feel increasingly grateful for no reason—grateful to simply be.” —John J. Prendergast, PHD, The Deep Heart

SUN!~ Day #6 (Week #4)

By Linda Malcomb • May 2, 2020
Seems like it’s been rainy, windy, dreary for eons. Which may have helped us shelter inside a bit more. I remember reading years and years ago in a Seth book that weather can be influenced, and even created by mass human emotion. Why not? We are far more powerful than we currently acknowledge, and science is beginning to validate many phenomena that had seemed inconceivable before. Those seemingly endless days of “bad” weather seemed congruent with the emotional tone of covid her in New England. And now SUN! Glorious, warming, invigorating, hope-filled Sun! Today I will be outside basking and gardening and thanking. And I’m sure the whole neighborhood, and most of New England will go outside, stand with our faces to the sun and breathe a huge healing breath of joy. And maybe the collective energy of that will resonate out across the word as a promise of brighter days to come.
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