Armed with these tools I planned and prepared for an hour-long class that I would teach, which looked something like this:

Discussion:

  • Ask the kids: What is yoga? Give additional insight to their answers. 
  • Set Ground Rules including:
  1. Stay on your mat 2.Try everything 3. Everyone is different so it’s impossible to be good or bad and you shouldn’t compare yourself.
  • Belly Breathing

Asana:

Name              Sanskrit                                  Additional items

Cat                   Marjaryasana                         Meow

Cow                 Bitilasana                                 Moo

Butterfly          Baddha Konasana               Ask what noises butterflies make?

Down dog        Adho Mukha Svanasana      Bark

Mountain        Tadasana                                 Be a tall, strong mountain

Tree                 Vrksasana                                Trees are rooted into the earth but their branches sway, can you

                                                                               sway without falling?

Frog                 Bhekasana                               Do leap frog

Warrior II        Virabhadrasana II           Partner Warrior, explain that we can be peaceful warriors, not

                                                                               sway without falling?

Boat                 Navasana                                Can you also try to row your boat?

Corpse Pose    Savasana                              Change the name to sleeping pose

Meditate on your favorite place, go there and remember how that happiness made you feel.

After teaching the class I reflected quite a bit on my experience and what I struggled with, what I would change, and what worked well. While I certainly did some things well, I was confronted with more challenges than anything else. First, I struggled with my ability to discipline. I am fully aware that a yoga class with kids will not be quite or calm and probably shouldn’t be. However, should I reprimand or discipline children for any of their behavior, particularly when nothing about discipline feels yogic? Second, the kids that I work with rarely are acknowledged for their effort or good work and I work hard at reinforcing positive behavior. Yet, should I tell someone their down dog looks good or they are doing such a good job trying to balance in tree pose, when it merely is feeding their ego? Third, Many of the youngsters had taken yoga before in school, and were knowledgeable enough to request poses or wanted to teach me various asana. This behavior required me to be humble and learn from my students, totally shattering my vision of what a student, teacher relationship should look like. Fourth, adapting some of the poses to kids, like turning a relatively static Bhekasana into leap frog, or an Adho Mukha Svanasana into a barking dog, seems trivial and far from the calm and serene idea that I have of yoga.

After reflecting on these challenges for quite a bit, I realized that I was trying to squeeze carefree and dynamic young children into a rigged and sterile framework that is intended for adults. Adaptation, creativity, and flexibility are requirements when working with kids; therefore they should also be requirement when teaching yoga to kids as well! My experience teaching a yoga class to 15 inner city kids, who face abuse, neglect, and poverty on a daily basis, was humbling to say the least. Yet, one incredibly redeeming aspect to this experience, and one that I should not overlook, is that every single child in the class absolutely loved their time on the yoga mat and conveyed that to me in their excitement, their words and the smiles on their faces. And lastly, as we rolled up the mats and said our goodbyes, a peaceful and serene feeling radiated in the room, so much so that my colleague said to me: “I’ve never seen these kids so calm and quiet in my two years here”. That’s enough to inspire my return!

As part of Axis Yoga’s teacher training program, students are taught basic ayurvedic principles as they apply to their lifestyle, diet and yoga practice.  As a component of this exercise students also take on a personal experiment to begin to implement these teachings.  One of Axis Yoga’s guiding principals is that students need to embody the teachings into their lives for optimum learning to transpire.  This is not to say they should accept everything we say as gospel, rather they should check it out with their own experience.  The ayurvedic experiment provides the support and guidance needed to start that process.
 
This student removes wheat from her diet while integrating ayurvedic principles in the hopes of relieving migraines she has been suffering from for ten years. Below is an account of her experiment.

My experiment began in early-November when I began learning about Ayurveda. While I was perplexed by some of the seemingly disparate instructions, I did notice that many of the ideas presented appealed to me and that there were pieces of this philosophy I was hungering for. For my Ayurvedic experiment I added the practice of abhyanga to my morning. This practice of lovingly rubbing herbally-medicated oils all over my body was wonderful. It brought to my morning some peace and to my life, some self-love. Self-love has been a long and hard road for me; abhyanga was an easy place to start. I also practiced eating in silence and doing nothing else. Although at times challenging, if only because my mind was used to doing several things at once, I found this a wholly satisfying experience. I noted that I consumed significantly less food than I if I was multi-tasking. I also noted that I felt a much deeper sense of contentment and satisfaction, not only with my food, but with my life. These were amazing practices to bring to my existence.

Then, while discussing our Ayurvedic experiments, I overheard another student in my yoga training explaining that she had previously had terrible eczema but she had cut wheat out of her diet while completing an Ayurvedic cleanse and that her eczema had gone away completely.  Later, I was reading over the material of foods not recommended for Kapha people (I am 50% Pitta and 50% Kapha). Wheat, and many things like it, was in the “avoid” column. I woke up several days later with a revelation. I believed the migraines I had been having for 10 years were caused by wheat. My hypothesis was if I removed wheat from my diet, as recommended by Ayurvedic principals, my migraine headaches would disappear.

I have had migraines almost every day for the last year or so. They varied in severity, but almost always included sensitivity to light, sound and movement. They were very drug resistant and the only way I could even reduce the pain slightly was to take 4 ibuprofen tablets, wait 30 minutes and then take 2 extra-strength acetaminophen tablets. Considering I was doing this on an almost daily basis (I tried to “tough it out” if I could), I am sure this was wrecking havoc on my stomach.

Day 1 – I ate nothing but gluten-free foods. Did not have a headache.

Day 2 – Only gluten-free foods until arriving home at 5pm. Had a minor headache. Ate leftover-pasta. Headache became very intense within five minutes of beginning to eat pasta. Headache was so painful I could not look at the computer or television. I took my usual doses of acetaminophen and ibuprofen, to no avail. Headache persisted through the night into the next day.

Days 3-7 no gluten consumed, no migraines.

Day 8 – Staff “appreciation” at my middle school. I resisted all gluten-containing items for about 4 hours. I finally decided to have one brownie, about a 1.5” square. I did not get a headache.

Days 9 – 11 – Thanksgiving holiday – did not eat wheat, did not have a headache.

Day 12 –Had pie from Thanksgiving, did not have a headache right away, but later in the day I did.

Day 13 — Woke up with headache, which dissipated as the day went on.

Day 14 — Had half a small bowl of macaroni and cheese from school cafeteria. Within an hour I had a migraine that lasted until mid-day the next day.

The data shows that my hypothesis was accurate, eliminating gluten from my diet did in fact correlate positively with a decrease in headaches. Given that this was the only change I made during this time, it is safe to conclude that this relationship is causal. Further review seems to indicate that pasta was the worst offender, causing a headache almost immediately that lasted for 1-2 days. Gluten containing baked goods also seem to have a negative effect, but with a more time-delayed reaction. This makes it harder to track when and what caused the headache, so it appears that the safest route would be to eliminate wheat altogether.

This has definitely been a bittersweet journey. I am so relieved to have figured out why my head was hurting almost all the time. Concurrently, it has been frustrating and sad. It is frustrating on several levels. There is almost no on-the-go, easy food that is gluten-free and vegetarian (I am a lacto-ovo vegetarian). I have never been one to think about meals, rather just buying what was easy and available. This hasn’t been good for my pocketbook or my physique, but it has been my way for a long time. So when I haven’t planned meals and need something on-the-go, there are very few options and it is difficult. It has also been frustrating because gluten-free foods are incredibly expensive! Gluten-free seems to be the newest fashionable craze, so markets are charging a lot for this “luxury”.  

This has also been sad because it eliminates a lot of foods that I love. For Thanksgiving my mom makes rolls from my great-grandmother’s recipe. It is an important tradition in our family and, for us, is the item that “makes” Thanksgiving. I had other things that were good and I enjoyed them, but it was still sort of sad. There was the staff appreciation day where I couldn’t really have anything. Now, logically, I know that sweet food does not equal appreciation, but not being able to partake still made me feel a little not appreciated.

I think this information is bringing to light a lot of my issues around food. I like food to be easy and not think about it, which is costing me financially and health-wise. I like to eat what others are eating and I associate food with appreciation or whether or not a day/holiday was good. This new information about my health and my body is informative and will help me to move forward on my personal and yogic journeys. Overall, the things I have implemented from Ayurveda have had a very positive effect on my life; significantly increasing my sense of peace and contentment in the world. I look forward to continuing to implement other Ayurvedic principals for continued growth and continue on the path to enlightenment.

As part of Axis Yoga’s teacher training program, students are taught basic ayurvedic principals as they apply to their lifestyle, diet and yoga practice.  As a component of this exercise students also take on a personal experiment to begin to implement these teachings.  One of Axis Yoga’s guiding principals is that students need to embody the teachings into their lives for optimum learning to transpire.  This is not to say they should accept everything we say as gospel, rather they should check it out with their own experience.  The ayurvedic experiment provides the support and guidance needed to start that process.
 
Below you will find an example of one students exploration into ayurveda.  Alexis explores how the use of Aryurvedic herbal remedies, meditation, mantras, asanas, and other practices help restore dosha balance and decrease the pain she experiences in her lower back.

It just so happened that fall started settling in about the time that our Ayurveda unit fired up in YTT. As the wind came up and the temperatures went down, I noticed my low back tightening up more than usual. I’ve been experiencing chronic low pain from 2 torn discs and a genetic disorder of the spine for about three years, and I’ve tried nearly every remedy from Western and alternative medicine that I could find, usually with lack-luster or temporary results. Throughout all that, I’d never thought about whether the pain pattern shifted based on variables like time of year or temperature. It was actually quite an enlightening moment when I realized a connection between the increased discomfort and decreased temperature.

From the reading I’d been doing in The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies by Vasant Lad, I’d already identified that my vata dosha was out of balance and I’d read about the common link between aggravated vata and low back pain. So, I tinkered with vata-balancing diet and routine recommendations for the week of our Ayurvedic experiment, but that didn’t give me enough time to really dive into my back pain and whether I could decrease pain by applying Ayurvedic principles. So for my personal experiment, I formed this hypothesis: If I apply vata-balancing and back pain recommendations from Ayurveda, along with asanas prescribed for back pain from B.K.S. Iyengar’s Light on Yoga, I can better manage my low back pain.