Just breathe...The updated website is complete.
Just breathe...The summer schedule is online.
Just breathe...your first blog post is ready to go, wait! what?!? Let the hyperventilating begin!
My sister and I both went into the field of education. I was an early elementary school teacher and she is a middle school English teacher. So, writing was always her thing. As I've gotten older I have gained some confidence, but putting it out there on the "World Wide Web" can still be a little daunting. However, I can't wait to share with you all what I know and what I continue to learn about breath, yoga and movement for children. So, I will take a deep breath in and share...
I work with students of all ages throughout the Twin Cities area, but my favorite students are preschoolers! Everything is new and exciting to them and they still have curiosity burning in their hearts. This week, we were experimenting with our breath and learning how we can change it, in this instance slow it down. We have practiced many breaths together from Breathing Ball Breath and Take 5 to Invisible Zipper and Breathing Sticks, but today we learned the Five Finger Breath.
Five Finger Breath involves tracing around the outside of your hand with the finger of your other hand. But, with preschool students, it isn't always that easy!! We started out with a demonstration of me tracing my hand with a marker. Then, we moved to tracing our hands on our mats with "invisible ink". Finally, we added our breath to the tracing to do the Five Finger Breath. Starting at the bottom of our thumb, we traced up to the top of our thumb while breathing in. We stopped at the top before breathing out and tracing down to the area between the thumb and pointer. We continued to breathe in up each finger to the top and breath out down each finger to the next. After 5 slow deep breaths we made it to the outside of the pinkie.
*The most important thing in sharing breathing and calming techniques with your child is to practice them in times of calm so that when that calm goes missing they already know what to do!
Check out this video of our Five Finger Breath!