This article is the second part of the article titled “Alternative Education in Your Kids Yoga Class” by Gopala Amir Yaffe

We’ve all heard about alternative education systems, but not many of us have had the time to explore their philosophies. Like yoga, many of these systems are inspired by eastern philosophy. And like yoga, they are constantly evolving and could be understood as a response to the industrial way of thinking.

The focus of these alternative educational systems and of yoga is the exploration of the individual and of the universe from an ‘inner place’. While in the traditional education system, science’s empiric evidence and objectiveness is most valued and considered truth, in yoga and in the philosophies surveyed below, subjectivity is treasured as the way to understand ourselves, the world, and each other.

In yoga we believe that the world is an extension of ourselves, and that the more we know ourselves the more we understand the world. In alternative education systems, as in the normal development of any child, the journey starts from within as well. By encouraging imagination and questioning, and by discovering our surroundings by using all of our senses, we help our kids grow into beings that are well connected to their inner selves, their bodies and their environment. This is in contrast to the traditional education system where so-called objective knowledge is given from the “outside” through lectures and books.

If you teach yoga in mainstream educational institutions, you can help the kids to explore outside the constricting walls that are built around their minds when they are always being told what is the truth, and what and how to do everything. Give them a little taste of freedom, creativity and real life by letting them be crazy and wild for just a bit, and allowing them to learn from their hearts and from their bodies and through all of their senses.

Alternative educations systems encourage parent interaction, family interaction and the community at large. As in our family and community yoga classes, there is a huge emphasis on working together and supporting each other while being able to express ourselves as individuals. Schools are a great place to send our kids, they give parents a well-needed respite from them…but those who took the responsibility of being parents must realize that it is the hardest job in the world and that their presence and attention is needed in their child’s education.

Below is a review of some of the most well-known alternative educational systems and their possible applications in a kids yoga class.

Montessori Schools

The Montessori movement began in the early 1900's by Maria Montessori, who founded a school in Rome for disadvantaged children and those with special needs. She was an incredible, selfless woman who devoted her life to improving and educating children that seemed to have been forgotten. Using her methods, these children learned rapidly and by the age of five they could read, write and had learned the basics of mathematics.

The Montessori classroom is grouped into three-year age groups and the children are taught according to the sensory needs of the group. The classroom is like a busy workshop and children are free to go from activity to activity throughout their day. The teacher works with one or two children at a time, children and teachers are taught to respect concentration and not interrupt or hurry someone who is busy in their task. We, adults, expect absolute respect from kids, but do we give them the respect they deserve? We must allow them space to be themselves and to explore their fields of interest.

“Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.” Maria Montessori

Montessori believed that young children are primarily focused on their senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, and must be able to use these senses in order to learn. Montessori schools base their learning around this belief.

Montessori devised a set of manipulative learning materials that invite children to explore colors, shapes, textures, sounds, language, and even geometric relationships. For example, she designed a series of beautifully colored glass beads to help young children develop numerous mathematical skills. She also developed a method of teaching mathematics through numbers cut from sandpaper; children could not only see the numbers, but also touch and trace them with their fingers memorizing the number and the shape of the textured paper.

“Plainly, the environment must be a living one, directed by a higher intelligence, arranged by an adult who is prepared for his mission.” Maria Montessori

Create a sensory yoga class, exploring yourself using all of your senses. Sit with your eyes closed and meditate on the senses:

• Smell: Focus on the smell of a flower, burning incense, chocolate…
• Taste: Here it’s crucial that you close your eyes. Place a piece of chocolate in your mouth and let it slowly melt
  and dissolve. Feel all the flavors, making sure you are not thinking of anything else now (it’s not that hard).
  Feel the warmth and the soft texture of the chocolate. You can try the same with honey, crackers (they make interesting sounds too) etc.
• Sight: With eyes open, focus on a flower, a picture, scenery, the room, your friend’s face or eyes, a candle flame
  etc., and notice all the little details you never saw before. After a minute or two, close your eyes and visualize what
  you saw as clearly as you can in your mind.
• Touch: You can also massage yourself while sitting with eyes closed as a meditation. Start by rubbing your feet and slowly climb up your legs and body until you reach your face and sculpt. Finish with a moment of stillness being aware of all of the sensations in your body.
• Sound: Concentrate your full attention on the ticking of a clock, flowing water, songs of birds, music etc.
  Let yourself become totally absorbed in that sound. You can also chant Om loudly for about a minute and then keep repeating the sound mentally for another minute.

Here is another way to explore sound; I call it Stop and Listen. You will need a Tibetan bowl or a bell that makes a very long sound for this game. Have the kids walk randomly around the room, and once you ring the bell, everyone stands absolutely still and closes their eyes. They listen very carefully to the sound, and only once the sound has completely disappeared and they cannot hear it at all can they start walking again. Repeat for as many times as you want.

I use a Tibetan bowl in almost every class and for all age groups. You can get a Tibetan bowl at the closest Tibetan store or online. They are a bit costly, but they are worth it. These bowls are a magical tool for focusing, relaxing and healing. The sound vibration brings the mind to a total state of calm, generating alpha brain waves in seconds. The kids love it and look forward to it.

You can use the bowl at the end of the guided imagery or relaxation placing it on the kids’ bodies and just letting the sound vibrate as you play the bowl. After relaxation let the kids play a bit with the Tibetan bowls and even play them on each other and on you.

To explore the sense of touch further you can blow bubbles onto the children; let the bubbles burst on their skin or have the kids jump in the air to catch them with their hands. You can also use “touch and feel” animal books as a fun tool for getting young children into poses… and of course, there is nothing like massage to become totally present and fully relaxed. In the Montessori classroom you will find a special space where unsettled children can quietly sit for a while listening to music and coloring. You can have a space like that in your yoga class where kids color Mandalas until they are ready to rejoin to the group. “When the children have completed an absorbing bit of work, they appeared rested and deeply pleased. It almost seemed as if a road had opened up within their souls that led to all their latent powers, revealing the better part of themselves. They exhibited a great affability to everyone, put themselves out to help others and seemed full of good will.” Maria Montessori, MD

Waldorf Schools

This system of education was designed by Rudolf Steiner, a well-known spiritual intellectual in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. Steiner believed that there are three major functions in life:

• Willing: up to age 7, children are beings of will and movement. They are exploratory and constantly in motion.
• Feeling: from ages 7 to 14, children are beings of feeling, aesthetic sensitivity, imagination, and artistic creativity.
• Thinking: starting at age 14, they begin to think abstractly, analyze, conceptualize and become highly critical.

Waldorf schools are designed for children to learn in a way that is consistent with these three stages. It is extremely important to keep the yoga class age-appropriate. Vegetables are good for you, but not if you don’t have teeth to chew them. If you ask children to do things that they can’t or do activities that they find uninteresting, you will get negative behavior in response.

Younger kids need to move a lot, and fast. They need to discover the world through their bodies, and you can use yoga in this way to learn about absolutely anything by moving through it.

For older kids, you should bring a greater sense of aesthetics into the yoga poses and sequences. Involve them in the class and let them create new ways to move and do yoga.

Teenagers want to understand why they are doing yoga and how it’s going to benefit them. Tell them about the benefits of the practice but also guide them to feel the effects of the poses from within by directing their attention to specific body parts or even to their minds.

Art, music, handwork and crafts are important. Steiner believed that when children make crafts or sing a song, their brains and nervous system are enhanced so that future learning is easier. Waldorf schools do not pressure children to learn to read or master other academic skills in the early grades. Imagination is considered more important.

When you teach yoga to kids, try not to make it so goal-oriented. This is sometimes challenging in a mainstream school where they want to see results and “real” progress; but if you know at all what yoga is all about, you’ll know that your success is not measured by how far you can bend your body, but by how big and constant your smile is. Focus on the process and on having fun in the moment instead of focusing with the kids on the final result.

Explore imagination in your Kids Yoga classes by taking the kids on captivating journeys to different countries or to magical places. When we go on a yoga journey we need to get there somehow, so we do all kind of traveling poses like the airplane or the boat. Then we use different objects or elements of nature like trees and rocks. We continue on our trip and we encounter many yoga animals. We get hungry, so we do food poses and we do many other things wherever we happen to be.

Balance your yoga classes with singing, games, drama, dancing, story telling and loads of generous playtime. Yoga is much more then yoga poses, and anything can become yoga with the right attitude. Rudolf Steiner, speaking in Oxford in 1922, defined "three golden rules" for teachers. You will find those rules very yogi-like:

1. To receive the child in gratitude from the world it comes from
2. To educate the child with love
3. To lead the child into the true freedom which belongs to man

And here we have the point of mutual respect emphasized again in the three points for discipline that Steiner uses:

1. Respect for all human beings (including oneself and others)
2. Respect for all living teachers and plants
3. Respect for school and personal property

There is a balance between discipline and freedom, and everything you do should be done with an awareness of your environment. In our yoga classes everything is allowed, as long as the three rules of respect above are upheld.

Reggio Emilia Approach

Pioneered by Loris Malaguzzi and the parents of the villages around Reggio Emilia in Italy after World War II. Their community felt that it is in the early years of development that children are forming who they are as individuals. This led to creation of a self-guided curriculum based on the principles of respect, responsibility, and community, through exploration and discovery in a supportive and enriching environment, based on the interests of the children. The approach is based on the following principles:

1. Children must have the control over the direction of their learning
2. Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing, and
   hearing
3. Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world – children
   must be allowed to explore those relationships
4. Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves

In this system, teachers trust themselves to respond appropriately to children's ideas and interests. They have faith in children being interested in things worth knowing about and being aware of their environment and peers. They rely on parents to be productive members of their cooperative educational team. The result is an atmosphere of community and collaboration that is developmentally appropriate for adults and children together.

"Each child is unique and the protagonist of his or her own growth. Children desire to acquire knowledge, have much capacity for curiosity and amazement, and yearn to create relationships with others and communicate." Loris Malaguzzi The Reggio Amelia approach believes that children speak in a hundred different languages (not necessarily verbal ones). We can help our kids develop all of these ways of expressing themselves in our yoga classes with the use of imagination, music, dance, art and drama.

Other ways of getting children to speak in their unique language and explore many communication skills are group and partner poses where children are learning to work together, to trust one another, to build self-confidence and feel like an important part of a team.

When we do poses together we learn to move with more awareness, realizing that our movements affect our friends, we get constant feedback about our actions by communicating with our partner as well as by experiencing how it feels when they stretch us. Doing yoga together enhances non-verbal communication skills like facial expressions, touch and breath.

Encourage verbal participation and creativity in your class. In fact, the more you allow the kids lead the class by letting them choose what poses to do, to lead the yoga journey or decorate the poses as they wish, the more they will be a living and participating part of your class…and you are sure to learn some new things too!

Be flexible in your class plans and go with the flow of the kids. We, as teachers, don’t know everything. And we definitely don’t know our students better then they know themselves. Trust your students! They are extremely intelligent, even if in your eyes they just look like little kids.

It’s always easier and more exciting to learn about something you are actually passionate about and that is really interesting to you… even if it’s something silly in the eyes of an adult. Besides, by learning anything you heighten your ability to learn more. Knowledge should be taught to kids on a need or desire-to-know basis; it is the way we live, or at least want to live our lives as independent adolescents and adults - it is life. There may be subjects that children never feel the desire to dive into and they should be allowed to mould their own path and become passionate about what is truly in their heart.

Why should children need to learn in a different style than their parents? We are all driven by our interests, needs and desires, as adults we don’t waste time educating ourselves in things that we have no interest in, if we have the choice.

Maybe instead of teaching children mostly “things” we should focus more on encouraging them to listen to their hearts and give them the courage and the support they need to follow it - this would be real education and real yoga.

Charlotte Mason Method

Charlotte Mason was a British educator who lived in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Her method is centered around the idea that education is three-pronged: Education is an Atmosphere, a Discipline, and a Life.

1. Atmosphere applies to the surroundings in which the child grows. A child absorbs a lot from his
   home environment. Charlotte believed that atmosphere makes up one-third of a child’s education
2. Discipline applies to forming and maintaining good habits — and specifically habits of character.
   Cultivating good habits in a child’s life make up another third of his education
3. Life applies to academics. Charlotte believed that we should give children living thoughts and ideas,
   not just dry facts. The topics should not be merely theoretical but rather applicable concepts learned through concrete
   and colorful experiences. All of her methods for teaching the various school subjects are built around that
   concept

"Ideas are held in that thought-environment which surrounds the child as an atmosphere, which he breathes as his breath of life..." Charlotte Mason

Charlottes taught her students using what she called “living books” rather than dry textbooks. These books are written in story form by an author who is totally passionate about the subject. A living book makes ordinary things come alive.

She taught spelling by using passages from great books that communicate great ideas rather than just a list of words. She encouraged spending time outdoors, interacting with nature hands on and learning the living ways of nature.

"Let them once get in touch with nature and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight and habit through life." Charlotte Mason

We can apply Charlotte’s natural methods of teaching by creating an atmosphere that is complementary to your class theme and the atmosphere you wish to create and support in your class. Take into consideration music, temperature, lighting, bringing natural materials into the room (flowers, branches, shells etc.), essential oils and massage creams, and of course your positive attitude and your calm (yet fun) attitude.

Encourage and complement good behavior and habits; set your discipline standards to where you are comfortable and keep them there. We usually don’t force discipline on the kids; instead, we encourage them to check in with their hearts and see if the way they chose to act feels right. We tell them that the flower of their heart grows when they do things that feel good in their heart, and they always say that they can actually feel it growing. Make your classes come to life. Storytelling is a fantastic way to make your yoga class do this. Make your yoga journeys unforgettable and exciting, fill them with suspense and adventure, utilize your voice, alternate between fast and slow, always encouraging the whole class to be on this amazing adventure together as a team.

But what will really make the yoga class alive is you, the teacher. Words are just vibrations in the air; the real learning always happens by observing and imitating the way that the inspirational people in our life behave. We imbibe the qualities of the people we love. You have to be passionate and inspired by the work you do, or don’t do it at all.

Great teachers are great people, not just great lecturers. Light the fire in your heart and the sparks from it will enlighten your students.

To conclude, there is simply more out there then we are encouraged to know. There are options. We can do it the way we always wanted to. We don’t have to shout, we don’t have to tell kids how and what to do all the time. We can be friends, we can learn from them a lot if we let them teach us, if we stop thinking that we know it all. We don’t have to be in control and we shouldn’t be out of control either. We can love and laugh and be free and go crazy together without being afraid.

Resources:
Reggio Children
Simply Charlotte Mason
Steiner Schools in Australia