The Sunflower Children’s yoga pose
March 28th, 2007 All the children in the class sit in a nice big circle with their feet pointing in to the center of the circle, this makes a sunflower with
each child in the circle being a petal.
As we breathe out each child reaches towards its toes in a forward bend or Paschimottanasana and the whole sunflower closes its petals for the night.
When the sun comes out each child takes a big breath in and the flower opens up. They can open up either by stretching their hands up toward the ceiling or they can open out by lying flat on their backs with their hands on the ground behind them.
Sometimes in yoga class we open out in one big breath, while sometimes we go round the circle opening out one at a time to make a Mexican wave of petals opening up towards the sun.
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:54 pm
I also teach yoga to children. I love your website and the work you’ve done to share your games and so forth with parents and teachers - it’s just wonderful. I use very similar games and virtually the same lesson plan format - it works quite nicely.
I wanted to offer two addt’l variations to try with this group exercise, probably best suited for ages 5 and older.
1) After opening and closing the ‘petals’, have the children scoot their bottoms in a little closer to the center and ask them to ‘glue’ their feet to those of the friends on either side of them. If I were sitting in the circle, my right foot would be ‘glued’ to the left foot of the child on my right, and so forth. Once the children have ‘glued feet’ all the way around, ask them to put their arms around one another’s shoulders. On the count of three, take a deep breath and sit up tall and exhale down to lying position while bringing the legs up into the air - with the feet glued! Makes for an interesting shaped flower (a rose?)
Inhale deeply and work as a group to assist one another in coming back up to seated on the exhale.
2) Now, still keeping the feet ‘glued’, ask the children to take their right arm and reach between the legs and then under their right leg to hold the left hand of the friend on their right - do the same with the left arm, reaching between the legs and under the left leg to grasp the left side friend’s right hand. Once everyone is ready, count together to three and gently fall back while keeping the feet ‘glued’ together. Another interesting flower! A lotus perhaps?
The kids love this - and typically come up with many other flowers to create! Have fun!
Peace,
Lisa Flynn, ChildLight Yoga
June 7th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Hi Lisa, great to hear from you, thanks heaps for submitting your ideas. I have put your rose into another artical linking to this one you might want to have a look
http://www.resonateyoga.com.au/2007/06/07/the-flower-the-rose/
I put you name at the end and a link to you web site, thank you for shareing