Earth Day at Alluem Yoga

Love Your World

Yoga is not just about the body and the poses that we do on our mats. Yoga is about giving back - to ourselves, to each other and to the earth. This makes Earth Day a very special holiday to celebrate! There are so many ways we can give back to the earth and they can be explored in the book Love Your World. Raising eco-awareness in our smallest yogis is crucial if we want to see a bright future for them. They can actually be the ones that make the change! Try a game of Toe-ga with a twist! A cup as our trash cans and pom-poms as our trash - red for cans, blue for bottles, white for paper, and green for food scraps. After we collected all the trash and it was time to sort and recycle!!! Cans and bottles and can be recycled into new cans and bottles or cleaned and used creatively around the house or as art projects! Paper can reused as scrap or turned into new paper! Food scraps can be turned into compost and used in our gardens to grow more food! Development bonus: sorting is good for cognitive and motor development! Here are some more great books on recycling!: Don't Throw That Away by Lara Bergen and Hey, That's Not Trash! by Renee Jablow

Earth Day is April 22nd!

The first class of the new session was great! With Earth Day right around the corner, the class focus was all about it! Thanks to a most wonderful collection of ideas from Little Flower Yoga and Shanti Generation, the Alluem Kids were showing nothing but gratitude and love for our Earth this weekend!

Our meditation focus today was nature...the kids were asked to make an "Earth Connection". What part of nature do you most connect with? Is it the beach, the forest, by the lake, riverside, or even just your local park? The kids were to envision themselves in this space during their meditation. They were to think about what it felt like to be there - what it looked like, what it smelt like, what sounds they heard. We talked about about those places in nature that they connected with and came up with yoga poses to represent them - Mountain Pose, Tree Pose, Lotus Pose, and more! When we had enough examples - it was time to make our Earthscapes! The kids put it together a nature scene and came up with a great picture - mountain range with a river running through it with a bridge going over it, surrounding trees, flowers, rocks, turtles and chipmunks! So cute!

Little Flower Yoga reminds us to focus on a yogic principle of Saucha (cleanliness). We questioned how this Earthscape would look covered with garbage. Keeping our environment clean is important for the earth, the animals, and our neighbors. Keeping the environment clean shows respect, loyalty, and love. Keeping the environment clean keeps the peace. To make this principle fun - we played a mock clean up game - Toe-Ga! Toe-Ga is a game that works on balance and fine motor skills, but for today we imagined this method of "cleaning up" would help us practice Saucha. The class is split into 2 groups and the middle of the room is filled with large colorful pom-poms. The goal is to get as many pom-poms onto your mat in 15 second intervals using only your toes. When those are cleared, the middle of the room is filled with medium sized pom-poms. Finally, when those are cleared, the middle of the room is filled with tiny pom-poms. The smaller the pom-poms the harder it gets. More focus is needed to achieve balance. Toe-ga is always a good time and celebrating Earth Day can be a blast! Remember to give back to the Earth this week!