Guest Blog - Feel the Love

Feb 04, 2020

Feel the love and the opportunity to make the world a better place, one heart at a time.

Guest blogger D'Etta Broam is a school counselor at Pleasant Hill Elementary School in Lexington, SC.  We are delighted to share her enthusiasm for combining books and Yoga with our community.  We hope she inspires you as much as she does us.

Here’s a literature connection to flavor your Yoga fun! I tried the following with 7 and 8 year olds.

My Heart is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall is a great story for “Opening Your Heart!” The author/illustrator creates all kinds of critters out of hearts and explains how a heart can feel—angry as a bear, quiet as a caterpillar wearing knitted socks, brave as a lion . . . we had fun being the animals in the story with our Yoga postures. We then created our own heart critters and fashioned these into puppets, adding craft sticks for smaller puppets or paper pockets on the back for the bigger ones.

We listened and danced to MC Yogi’s “Give Love” while we created. Children designed mini puppet shows which expressed simple ways to show kindnesses to others—holding the door open for someone, helping someone carry something heavy, saying “hello,” etc. I work in a school setting, and we were able to video these little presentations and share the love with other students at our school by looping them on the BIG TV displayed in our lobby.

Other elements to our heart-opening experience: We chanted three “loves” for our oms. We sang “Love is Something When You Give It Away!” We experimented with the heart-opening partner pose “lizard on a rock.” We colored mandalas with hearts incorporated in the design.

To wrap up the fun, we shared the story Plant a Kiss by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. It’s a simple, little story with a “happy ending.” You’ll LOVE it and so will your yogis!