Warrior.

Last week, as the snow approached and the energy from our conferences peaked, I found myself in need of calming my entire class down… quickly. I know, this is the situation in most kindergarten rooms most of the time, but let’s just say the energy was overflowing and I needed to squelch it.

As the case with many folks with ADD, my mind can be like a tornado… all the thoughts and information are swirling around at high speed and it actually takes effort to grab one for my use. Luckily, at this moment, as the noise increased and my nerves began to rattle, I was able to pluck a useful gem out of the chaos in my mind.

“Girls and boys, has anyone ever heard of yoga?” I asked.

A few hands went up, but mostly I got perplexed looks.

“Yoga is the little green guy from Star Wars! I love Yoga!” Andy shouted.

My need for yoga increased.

“No, yoga is actually something you do with your body to help you stay strong, but it also relaxes your mind and relieves stress,” I explained.

“I do yoga sometimes, would you like to learn some poses?” I offered.

To be honest, I’ve only gone to a few yoga class with different friends that have dragged me… I do like it, but I don’t do it regularly.

With that, I modeled the tree pose. A silence came over the room as I watched my little sprouts try to be tall trees. I explained the slow intentional breathing. We then moved into the warrior pose. I did my best, trying to sound like the yoga expert I’m not, but they did well and actually begged to do more.

I was telling my friend Susan this story because she IS a yoga expert. She suggested I share the lion pose with my class. Apparently you stick your tongue out as far as you can and make a lion growl with your throat. All I could think was, ‘Heck Yeah!’ they are going to love that pose. We’ll be tree loving warrior lions in no time.