Happy Valentine's Day!

Keep Om in your Heart!

Today's classes were wonderful and filled with love as today is Valentine's Day! We naturally focused on our hearts throughout the whole class. Keeping our shoulders back, our spines long, and our hearts open so we could receive and send out love. Some great heart opener poses are:

-Cow Pose: On hands and knees, inhale and arch the back dropping the belly towards the floor and looking up towards the sky.

-Crab Pose: Reversed Table Top, hips lifted high, head can be dropped back. Feel free to take a Crab Walk as we did today around the room.

-Supported Bridge: Using a block on its side, lie back and lift hips bringing the block to your sacrum. Relax your arms and shoulders. For more of a challenge raise the block on to the taller side.

-Wheel: Lying back, pushing hands and feet into the ground, come up into a backbend.

-Camel Pose: Kneeling high, place both hands on your lower back to support it as you arch back looking up at the sky. Going further reach back and take hold of your heels, arching back further to see behind you.

I also thought this day would be a good opportunity to focus on our heart rates. We took our pulse after resting for a bit. As each child picked a sound for their heart beat (thump-thump, beep-beep, etc.), the room was filled with sounds to represent their heart beats. Slow to start, we talked about how we could speed it up. Movement of course! After a series of Frog Jumps, we took our pulse again and noticed how it sped up by making the same sounds. Our rate varies as our need for oxygen varies. When we were resting, our breathing was slow, so our heart beat was slower. As we did our Frog Jumps, we needed to take in more oxygen, so our heart beat got faster. Our heart is a muscle that works hard to send blood throughout our bodies. It works like a pump which is why we can feel it beat as it's working. And to keep it working you need to take care of your heart! Exercise, eat healthy, don't smoke, and remember your heart needs love, too, for all the hard work it does!

Happy Valentine's Day! If you stop by the studio tomorrow, there may be some extra homemade Om Cookies left!