Inspiring Young Minds!
At the heart of the Mini Me Yoga programmes and kids yoga classes are creativity, imagination, self expression and self development through mindfulness and positive thinking techniques and tools to create happy, healthy, confident children. Kate Bartram-Brown, the founder of Mini Me Yoga, has allowed children to develop their individuality and explore personal interpretations through the strategies and activities embedded into the 15 minute programme itself.
Allowing and encouraging children to be creative, imaginative and independent is something educators and parents strive to do on a daily basis. We do this constantly from play to story telling, trying to make mundane tasks and chores more exciting! From a very young age we want to express ourselves and explore the world and why shouldn’t we? Why should we be limited when the possibilities are endless!
Meditation and relaxation are just one technique that allows us to explore ourselves; our awareness, our minds, our imagination and our own creative flares and direction in a safe and supporting encouraging space. These are key elements that enable us to find ourselves, our interests and to begin our path of knowing who we really are!
I have recently spent time introducing and teaching meditation to my 9 year old niece and nephews. I have to be honest and thought at first that this would be extremely difficult; that they wouldn’t sit still or concentrate, that they wouldn’t understand what we were doing and why. However, they totally shocked me, in a really positive and mind blowing way!
With very little knowledge of meditation, all three settled into their space really quickly and were able to close their eyes and focus on their breathing. After this, I did several meditations with them; colouring mandalas and then spoken meditations. Their favourite meditations being the a guided visualisations as they said they could imagine everything I mentioned because it was like a story. They all relaxed with ease or what seemed to me as much easier than I thought. After the meditations, I asked them all how it made them feel; calm, peaceful, still, relaxed. This was wonderful, I was so pleased they had felt they had gained something from it even though it was their very first experience and over a few days we did this daily having a great impact on them, giving them “time out” from the chaos of daily life.
The most magickal and empowering element of this, was when my niece came to me and presented me with a meditation… yes, I know, I nearly cried, it really moved me!
After completing the meditations, she had gone away and written her own meditation based on the elements she loves and believes in. For her, it provided her with not only relaxed time out but the confidence to go and write her own to serve herself and her own needs. She had been inspired and encouraged to be creative, explore and expand her mind and knowledge and been empowered. It is not about perfection, but the experience and the positive impact it has had on her own self esteem and development. I have to say, I never thought that after only a couple of meditations, it would be as powerful as this and to somebody so young.
Inspiring and encouraging young minds to be true to themselves, explore, develop, be creative in their own way is more powerful than anything else in the world. Providing them with the tools to do so can only create confident, independent, positive, happy minds and in my mind, the smallest experience or the simplest thing can be the greatest and most powerful gift of all.
So, I have asked permission from my niece and she has agreed for me to share her first ever written meditation with you:
Don’t forget there is still time to sign up to our Summer School which starts today! Lots of resources for the family to use and enjoy together – yoga games, recipes, meditation, story telling and more! Contact your nearest ambassador or info@minimeyoga.com for more details on how to join.
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Vicki Readings is the Mini Me Yoga Ambassador for Wales and part of the U.K Schools team. She is a qualified Primary School teacher and currently training as a counsellor. From being a Primary School teacher and working in education, her passion is supporting children’s and families emotion well-being providing practical strategies to use on a daily basis to improve happiness and confidence. Alongside this, she has a passion for education, wanting to help create and build a creative, interactive child led curriculum where children are taught in a positive, inspiring environment that supports the next generation to be happy and confident providing them with skills for life.
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Contact: minimeyogawales@gmail.com or info@minimeyoga.com for more information or details on training.