Yoga, Creativity and Mindfulness

 By: Jayla Balderas  Today was our last day of the term! We started the morning working on the final presentation for next week when we welcomed our peers and parents to see what we learned. This presentation allowed us to reflect on what we have covered and our key takeaways. My reflection was the different creative mindfulness-based activities in the last two weeks, such as Metta Stones, Sand Manadalas, Zen Gardens, and Zentangles. My favorite creative activity was my Mandala coloring book. This is a great activity to ease anxiety and tension, and I used this coloring book throughout the week and during our breaks. Other students worked in the coloring books during student presentations, a great way to focus on what our peers were saying while we colored.  After working on our Google slide show, we chose three meditations from the meditation resource page. We did a five-minute meditation that you can do from anywhere at any time of the day. I enjoyed this five-minute me...

  By Veronica Pascucci Today, we started the day by welcoming in Dr. Reese for our last yoga session of the term. The day before, we had been advised to bring two pillows and a blanket from home for what she called “Restorative Yoga” which is exactly what we did this morning. The restorative yoga practice involves doing a few calm positions that we had already done prior to this session, but this time, with extra padding and support given to our head and back by our yoga blocks and pillows. Restorative yoga helps us to scan and relax our entire body, and it helps all of us get a nice break before starting the day. Many students said they had fallen asleep during it. We said our last goodbye to Dr. Reese for this course, and we took a little break before starting our first intellectual activity.  The rest of our morning was spent either finishing up our sand mandalas from yesterday or reading our chosen book for the week. Mainly everyone had finished theirs, so all of us had th...

  By:Kat Bigge Tue, Mar 26, 2024  Today, for the first hour we worked on a slideshow called Our Book of Life, and then we shared them and what our goals were with a partner. Some of these goals included our Health goals, Relationship goals, Finance goals, Family goals Spirituality Goals, and our Job/Dream job goals. After a break, we went through a guided meditation. In this meditation, we imagined our goals on a mental screen and  focused on one of our goals from our book of life. While focusing on that goal we tried to project it on our mental screen. We talked about how we will continue to use mindfulness after the M-term ends. I found it interesting to hear how different or similar our ideas were and how some of us wanted to only do mindfulness once a week and some of us half of the week. Then we spent around half an hour searching online for videos that will help us stay mindful and we linked them on a  document  so we can go back to them later. The links a...

 March 25th: The 6th Day of Mindfulness!  By: Madeleine Klopp Yoga + Savasana Today started out like everyday of Mindfulness, with yoga! This morning’s yoga lead by Dr. Reese really helped us to get us back into the swing of things after the weekend! For this session, Dr. Reese educated us on the chakras. We learned that chakras mean, “wheels”, and there are many of them. However, we only covered the main 7 chakras running from our head to our tail bone. She taught us the name of each chakra, each color they represented, each chakras root chakra word, what each chakra governs over, the vibration each chakra is on, and the mantras of each chakra. While we were meditating, we focused Dr. Reese also led us through another relaxing Savasana session, where afterwards she had to leave, where we started our next activity. Reading Last week, we had to pick a book out of the ones offered to us, read it and take notes on our book, and then have seminar. Last week we finished reading our...

  Friday, March 22: Day 5 of Mindfulness! By Yazzie Stein       Today was yet another inspiring and relaxing day in the mindfulness M-term. We started off the day bright and early with Vinyasa yoga (flow yoga; the positions are all connected fluidly) with Dr. Reese, which was a perfect way to stretch and get blood flowing in the morning. Then, we did a challenge: partner yoga poses! We each chose a partner for the "stacked plank", where one student did a plank atop the other. This was challenging and fun (but safe of course), and everyone got a laugh out of it! We finished our morning session with Dr. Reese with Shavasana: a restorative resting meditation technique. Some of us even got a small nap in! Yazzie and Cape doing the stacked plank     After yoga, we presented our topics to the class that we each researched yesterday. Today, we heard from students about metta stones, sand mandalas, total solar eclipses, and Mission: Joy. Learning about Metta s...

                                                                  Our Metta Stones Yoga      Today, Wednesday, March 21st, is the fourth day of our Yoga and Mindfulness M Term. Today we started off the day with some yoga. Today’s yoga was on the more “resting” side. Sort of like Shavasana (a resting, meditation type of yoga). Though instead of resting lying on our back we rested in lots of yoga positions, such as the sleeping cobra. In this pose you lay on your stomach, stack your hands on top of each other and rest your forehead on tour hands. Most of the poses we did we help for about 3 minutes and stayed in a resting state with a slight stretch. This is called Ying Yoga.                                       ...

Today, Wednesday, marked the third day of our Mindfulness and Meditation M-Term. We started our morning with a lovely yoga class by our yoga specialist, Dr. Reese. As yesterday marked the beginning of a new season with the Spring Equinox, the theme of this yoga session was balance. Combining relaxation and energizing yoga poses, the start to our mor ning delicately woke up the group, while still setting a tranquil mood across students. To finish off our morning session, we watched the first half of Mission: Joy (Finding Happiness in Troubled Times), a movie highlighting the friendship of two influential and inspiring spiritual leaders of the world: the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. This documentary shows the two discussing their personal journeys as advocates of non-violence, led by their spirituality in Buddhism and Christianity, respectively, and their roles in the battles for self-determination and justice for their native peoples, Black South Africans during Apartheid...

    What a wonderful way to end our second day of mindfulness! First thing in the morning, as students trickled into the classroom, we colored in our newly-acquired mandala coloring books. Beginning with such a calming activity was a great way to get our creativity flowing and settle our minds before starting with some more academic tasks. Our first activity was reading a book from our selection of either You Belong, by Sebene Selassie, or Mindful of Race, by Ruth King. After reading for 15 minutes, we did a check-in and seated stretch to ensure we were working with the utmost quality. After another 15 minutes of reading, those who read each respective book had a 10-minute seminar amongst those who read their same book. After the individual seminars, both groups joined together to discuss the big takeaways from the book.      Students then got to explore the magic of zen gardens, crafting their very own with boxes, sand, small decorations, and tools. This was an...

  A day full of Yoga, Creativity, and Mindfulness! By: Camila Yengle         After a wonderful spring break, the yoga, creativity, and mindfulness M-Term gathered together in room 105. We started off our morning on yoga mats doing Asana Yoga with Dr. Reese. We learned that there are several different ways to practice yoga including, Asana (poses), Pranayama (breathing), Dhyane (concentration), Dharma (meditation), etc. Dr. Reese led us through a yoga class where we learned how to do tree poses, the sun salutation, and how to ring a yoga singing bowl. After doing yoga, Maestra let us choose different notebooks and we journaled for a few minutes on our expectations for this M-Term as well as how we were feeling. Throughout the morning we each got to pick several different materials that we are going to use throughout this M-Term including tea mugs, markers, pens, essential oils, Mandala books, yoga blocks, tea bags, and eye masks. We spent the majority of the...