Here are a few pics from some of the kids’ yoga classes I teach in NYC public schools….

Each class has 25 kids, and is about 40 minutes long.
Basic structure:
Tune In(OM), Warm Up(Sun Salutations), Learn and Try(Asanas and Games), Relaxation(Savasana)
The students are in grades K-4, and are learning a basic asana practice, sun salutations, meditation, and some Sanskrit.
There are 4-5 yoga classes a day, 5 days a week!

see:

http://www.thefierceclub.com/FREE_CLASS.html

For a free pass to Fierce Yoga, in Soho, founded by Sadie Nardini, Core Strength Vinyasa Girl.

I’m a little in love with Eddie Vedder. I first heard this in a yoga class and its very swoon-worthy:

Your bones are the architecture of your ancestry: your muscle and flesh are inherently yours to move and build with: the choice of whether to activate and utilize that which is your own present expression or to rest on the bones.

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Kapalabhati (breath of fire) mimics the breath pattern of sobbing, or mourning, and sends messages to the brain and body that you are experiencing these things. The amount we mourn and let go = the amount of new space we have created. If you’ve loved deeply, you must mourn deeply, and vice versa.
If you do not activate something new while mourning, you’ll have nothing to let go of the past for. Inhales are essential to exhales….if we have something new to breathe in, we will be more able to fully breathe out and let go. If there’s nothing to let go for, of course we’ll go back to the past and will not move forward.
Full inhales and exhales after kapalabhati = new breath, new life.

*
Yoga teachers strive to balance receptivity and assertiveness in a room. If there’s too much forcefulness, too much pushing towards a challenge, giving support and encouragement can counter that. If there’s too much ease, softness, a challenge will counter that. In this way, the teacher is dealing with rajas (activity, passion) and tamas (inertia, introversion) and aiming for balance.

*
If you know what you want, you are sending out energy clearly and without hesitation and will generally get it. If you are unsure of what you want, life will bring you challenges to help you clarify what it is you want. In shoulder-stand the toes are important: if they know where they are pointing, the whole leg will be engaged and the pose will be uplifted. If they are not activated and directional, and are unsure of where they want to go, the whole weight will slump into the shoulders and neck.

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver