Movement & Mindfulness (part-1)

When I lived in Connecticut, early in my teaching career I developed and taught a Movement & Mindfulness course in a private day school. It served as students’ physical education course, with a dose of therapeutic intervention mixed in. I was motivated at that time by the incredible luck and manifestation of landing a job that was the perfect combination of my strongest skills: teaching and yoga.

My experience until then was as a teacher in the public school system, so my start in this private school, for children with internalizing disorders, was well received by my spirit; it give me a chance to be back in the classroom full-time, with a focus on yoga instead of literature and writing, and with a therapeutic overlay.

This course was the first of its kind at Westport Day School, and it was unique to the milieu of educational culture in 2015; very few schools had daily yoga classes for students such as we had. It was the beginning of a well-intentioned trend to include social-emotional learning in curriculum as a way to address rising rates of childhood anxiety and depression, among other mental health illnesses.

It was a job made for me, and by me, having journeyed in recent years through challenges with my own mental health. I felt well-equipped to the role and I felt deep compassion for my students from a place of knowing. 

Joyfully, I was given the freedom to design the course as I saw fit. The core of my curriculum focused upon learning, through practice, physical asanas and breathwork techniques, and engaging in journaling exercises. Meditation instruction and creative play were also part of this. My approach, as their teacher, was trauma-informed and heavily influenced by my commitment to modeling unconditional regard for all. In this way, our time together, centered in the yogic domain, was richly rewarding. It was an innovative and incredibly satisfying time for me as a teacher and curriculum developer, and I feel confident in saying it was an enjoyable and healing time for my students as well. I especially loved the space opened up, as a result of our somatic practices, for conversations on philosophy, ethical behavior and mental health, and the strong relational component required of our work together –  the necessity of respect, trust, and boundary-setting. 

Read on! in related post “Zona Visphota”