NEIGHBORHOOD YOGA - START TEACHING. WHAT'S YOUR MISSION?

Mission
When I first began a children's yoga class in my neighborhood - there were none in existence within three or so miles.
My Mission was to build a stronger community by bringing affordable yoga to children, youth and adults in a friendly neighborhood environment.

Yoga MidCity, though its inception started in Mid-City, Los Angeles, is a model for every neighborhood.
It lights on your city, works with your community and empowers your children to know and love themselves and their environment.

Why Become a Teacher of Children's Yoga?
It is no question that yoga of all origins and styles is sweeping our country and becoming an accepted and appreciated tool for any person who starts a regular practice. From the work-force in the Mainstream to the lone soul searcher, to the former athlete, dancer, senior citizen, yoga is offered to you and your community. Not until recently though, have our young children and youth been factored into the equation. Those would likely need yoga as much, if not more, than we do.
Thankfully, in the past few years, has there become a rapidly growing demand (actually surpassing the supply) of solid, experienced and devoted yoga teachers for youth.
Today, the doors are wide open for children’s yoga – from public and private schools to community centers, Children’s Homes, Sunday Schools, to juvenile detention and rehab centers. And now, with concrete evidence that yoga and meditation taught in schools helps improve students’ performance on multi-levels, the need for children’s yoga will only increase.

We have been privileged to be at the front lines of this process. Our experience and success with teaching yoga to youth in multi-settings has only further convinced me that Kundalini Yoga is a special fit for children: the vigorous yoga kriyas coupled with meditation and deep relaxation are a perfect fit for young, energetic bodies and active minds. For those children in difficult situations, this yoga helps them kick out any surplus of negativity, fear, anxiety, anger and rage, depression and other undeserved pressures which trickle down onto their young minds from society.

We have seen the effects this powerful yoga has on our students and have noted ongoing progress in their lives as a result of a weekly practice. It is our unwavering obligation to share and spread these teachings and techniques to communities who are underserved in this area.
FROM: Light Leaders Teacher Training Manual
Crystal D'Angora and Blaire Baron Larsen
Training Teachers for all communities across the globe
www.lightleaders.com

Blaire Baron YOGA MIDCITY FOR YOUTH: NOT JUST POSE AFTER POSE AFTER POSE!

Blaire Baron YOGA MIDCITY FOR YOUTH: NOT JUST POSE AFTER POSE AFTER POSE!

NOT JUST POSE AFTER POSE AFTER POSE!

YOGA IS A UNION - Not Just one Pose after the other. 

Being connected with your Self is the point.  Play does that. 

A Teacher's interests, hobbies, passions and skills, outside of yoga, when introduced in a playful spirit, are useful before the actual yoga starts. 

My training in theatre has given me tools for all different ages – ice breaker games, brain stimulating games, confession games – all these have created a safe place for each group to express themselves, sometimes verbally, sometimes, nonverbally, with their bodies. Sometimes the kids want the games more than the yoga because they are connecting to each other - but the games open them up and lighten their mood - then they are willing to do the yoga set.

After the group has learned the game – or just when they feel they have mastered it and the class starts to become predictable, i found it is very effective to switch the games, enlist some of the class members to lead in the games or invent something entirely new on the fly. 
blaire baron larsen, ikyta, ryt. Light Leaders Master Trainer

"THAT STUDENT IS JUST LIKE ME" - MAYBE NOT!

Often we see ourselves in students – that can be the beginning of a prejudice or attempt to “fix” that unhealed perceived “defect” the in the child. This is where all our unconscious prejudices come from. We cannot prevent them but if we are aware of ourselves and teaching consciously and mindful of these inevitibilities, we can curtail bias or favoritism. Many people work around children for reasons that lie in the unconscious; the compulsion is there to fix children with needs that we think should be met and over with. A special bias against privileged children prevents us from seeing the god in all. A misplaced fear of the alleged bully or mean girl can blind us from seeing they are one step away from being great heroes and healers and leaders. Why did they end up in your room? Why are they on those mats? Is it just a random thing or could you give them the key or tool they’ve been looking for? At the teacher training that I do with Crystal and Dr. Nevins, we participate in exercises that bring up our unconscious or conscious biases, aversions, preferences and prejudices. Thanks to these exercises, I am very aware of my tendencies to favor the unpopular kid. The loner. But the awareness of it gives me choices. I can notice it, rather than act on it, now that I have the awareness, which I don't even judge anymore. I love that our yoga is the Yoga of Awareness. Not the yoga of Yogi Bhajan, not the Yoga of a Guru: the Teacher is in the "Teachings".

THE KIDS AT CITY BALLET, L.A. (CBLA)

I am lucky enough to be the yoga director for this group, City Ballet of L.A. and to teach three classes to the dancers and their mothers on Saturday mornings. They are the only group of kids anywhere I have taught yoga, that you can hear a pin drop in the class. What is that?! I have taught up to 30+ kids in a room and never have had to "wrangle" or "remind" anyone about respecting Self and others. I feel so privileged to guide these angels at this tender time in their lives. Cards are stacked against them as young Latina and African American women living in this downtown jungle, but we are moving the cards and empowering them with dance, yoga, the arts, a Voice to speak out and take up space.

Tomorrow they will be taking up space along with the adult pros (the Company) in Nutcracker Swings at the Nate Holden Theatre on Washington Bl.(around Rimpau). Robyn, the artistic director, incorporates Duke Ellington's Nutcracker with Tchaikovsky. It takes place in World War 2 and it's gorgeous to look at. The best thing about this version of Nutcracker is it is mercifully about 90 minutes, if that, with no intermisson. Last year, we played The Orpheum and it was a blast to be inside that amazing space. But I like that Nate Holden is being used and it's my hope, living so close to that theatre, that more art comes to the space. More art, more life, more people.

SAFETY IS A MYTH UNTIL ITS ME

People have things and places they call their sanctuary. Like the ocean, or the libaray, or a temple of some sort, or the mountains, the desert, a yoga class, a recovery meeting, church, temple, a nightclub.

Here is my recent lesson on making places and things my sanctuary: They become the opposite.

The second I decided that a certain yoga class was my "sanctuary" - yes definitely my "one safe place" in the city, my "only solace" in the urban jungle - I got stalked there.
Insult to injury - I found little support, though I had been coming regularly for 10 years. I was told "All are welcome to this path, there is a reason he is here. you don't own the yoga." huh?

I had to change my schedule totally and haven't found my groove there since. I now sit in the back, not the front. But there was a gift in it. I felt so viscerally, how much I had put that place and those teachers and spiritual people into the position that should be reserved for either A. My own Divine Inner-Teacher/Self or B. My Higher Power
Again, once I decided a certain teacher was "my one spiritual teacher" - this teacher showed an unkind side and I was shattered.

I thought I had learned the lesson. But then I replaced venues. Just when the recovery meeting I started in my neighborhood, turned into "my cozy safe magical place" - wow, my feeings have been hurt there several times, why? I assumed everyone was safe and loving etc. Right. Wake up call: people come to 12 step meetings because they are insane on some level, and I forget that and turn them into safe angels. It's not the people who are safe, it's the group consciousness, the amazingly safe way the program is structured. People get hurt before and after meetings, not during.

Wow. Fortunately I do have spiritual tools and the ability to see the bigger picture and not be afraid to shift old patterns of thinking when making people and places and things bigger than me doesn't work. Yet it takes a painful and repetitive lesson for me to change permanently. My new perspective, based on experience...

Nothing and no one is "safe" on planet earth. And so what?

I have to be my own safe person, my own sactuary, my own best friend, as the cliche instructs. Period.

As long as there are people, there is going to be conflict (hopefully not ALL the time) But yes, even in a yoga class, even at the ocean, even before the alanon meeting. And once I stop looking for "safe havens" and simply walk through different spaces with grace and courage, adapting, with eyes open and sensitive to the environment, then I don't have to live like a wandering exile, compartmentalizing places and people into Safe and Unsafe, trusting This One with my firstborn and That One, not at all. They're just people, many sicker than others, many surprisingly sane and balanced. And they don't all have to like me and I don't have to like them. It's all an illuion anyway and two weeks later, does it really matter? So that's the good news.

ITS OKAY TO FEEL WEIRD ON THANKSGIVING

Sat Nam and Namaste. And as a yoga teacher to children and young adults, this is what I told them, while everyone else is telling them to "BE GRATEFUL!" Yeah, yeah.
I will, but not when you tell me to.
I never liked the "sitting around with relatives" part of this holiday - and I never ever could sit through a footbal game, and am thankful my family of origin felt the same way. Then there's the food. I like de-bunking fixed unexplained traditions. Having recently returned from New England and seen Plymouth, Mass for the first time - I got some facts straightened out. First, they ate seasonal vegetables mostly, venison, some foul and likely no turkey on the "Plimouth" Thanksgiving, which was actually a Harvest Feast. So I went out into my garden and picked everything that looked ready. So far on the menu - fried green tomatoes, squash, red potatoes and mixes greens. But this is a collaboration so we shall see what the other contingent brings to the table, if he ever wakes up.
I am big on not forcing the emotional imperative about any given holiday. I am grateful, yes and it's healthy for my nervous system to practice gratitude. But I am also sad and melancholy around this time, having lost a father and grandmother on Thanksgiving day in the past decade. And around Christmas, I just go into my conspiracy theories for a month, until it's over. On New Years Eve I read the Tibetan book of the Dead, The Talmud or the Bible and try to figure out who wrote them.
When moods come up around now, I don't squelch them anymore and put on that crazy happy face for the public or immediate family, nor do I have shame about being and feeling sad, mad, frustrated, muddled or anything else that isn't the popular emotional color of the Holiday. I am not a sheep, I am a human being with complexities and a history - I could never force myself to be pious on Sunday mornings, in a party mood on New Years Eve, totally grateful for having to cook on Thanksgiving, impish and precious on St. Patrick's Day and madly in love with my perfect partner on Valentine's Day. The gift of that is I get to be authentic and at one with (yoga = union) my Self. For example, I am going to sign off now and scream. Details to follow.
Blaire Baron Larsen
IKYTA RYT