Private Yoga and Mindfulness Meditation

Introduction: OmKids is a children’s Mindfulness and Yoga Program to support connection, attention, and emotional balance. OmKids brings Mindfulness and Yoga to children in Maine. This program uses 5 key elements of yoga and mindfulness to decrease the impact of stressors on children's learning, provide opportunities for children to learn at their highest potential, and develop emotion regulation skills. Many children face stressors that can have short and long-term detrimental effects. Stressors come in many forms and children show us the impact through behaviors like emotional reactivity, inattention, difficulty learning. OmKids provides children and caregivers the basic skills needed to balance emotions and manage stress. This program will support children and those who care for them to reconnect with themselves, their communities, and their environments with kindness and curiosity. Using the 5 key elements of Yoga and Mindfulness, OmKids builds empathy, strength, and resilience in our children. 5 Key Elements of Yoga and Mindfulness: 1) Connect - Engage students in activities to improve children's connections with themselves, others, and their environment with kindness and curiosity. 2) Breathe - Teach breathing techniques to energize or calm the body and mind. 3) Move - Provide fun opportunities to learn yoga poses that support processing stress hormones in the body, and release pent up energy. 4) Focus - Introduce activities that strengthen the ability to anchor attention at will and navigate, not eliminate, distraction. 5) Relax - Teach relaxation strategies to improve sleep and get children to feel more comfortable resting in their own bodies. I love children, and with a background in early childhood development and public health, as well as 10 years of experience practicing and teaching yoga and meditation, I am certain this program is a preventative method for many of the long term negative health outcomes faced by our society. When we learn early on how to connect with ourselves and one another; use breath to balance emotions and energy; move in ways that release energy; anchor our attention at will to support learning; and relax to improve sleep and overall health and well-being; we are teaching our children about self awareness and setting society up for long term success.