AYP in Grade school class rooms?

[Anthem]

Hi Yogani,

A friend of mine is a elementary school teacher and is interested in introducing a little yoga and AYP meditation into her weekly class routines. She was inspired after seeing the videos about how TM meditation has helped children be better students and improve their behavioural problems as shown on David Lynch's website here:

 http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/in-the-news.html  

This friend of mine practices AYP deep meditation and thought to introduce it since it is what she is familiar with and importantly for teachers on shoe-string budgets, there are no costs associated with introducing AYP to students (TM makes them pay heavily for their system). Not to mention AYP has everything TM has in terms of practices and more.

The only question is, how long would you recommend children between the ages of 7 and 10 perform deep meditation and might they want to do a light version of attending to the breath instead of a mantra? I have no experience in these matters, so your suggestions would be welcome.

There is 15 minutes to work with, keeping in mind the attention spans of youngsters, wondering if 5 minutes of simple postures, followed by 3 to 5 minutes of deep meditation and 2 minutes of rest sounded reasonable? The last thing wanted is symptoms of over-doing and of course it has to be fun to hook their attention and that is where the postures come in.

I’m putting it out here in case others want to follow suit.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[brother neil]

I am a school teacher myself and I can appreciate her desire to teach the kids.  I would think she needs to be careful of what she teaches the kids for the sake of maintaining her job.  If she teaches the kids some "physical exercises" like what yogani has in the book, and teaches them deep breathing and relaxaation in corpse pose, I would think she should be able to stay in the clear.  If she teaches spinal breathing and the I AM meditation she is embarking on religious boundries.  There are people in the world who are scared of wtitings/teachins such as ayp and if they find out the meaning behind the I AM mantra and she has had their child doing it, I would think some parents may take that all the way to court for a law suit.  If she decides that she still want to go through with this I recommend she get signed permission from everyone involved.

How does TM not have this issue?  in TM is the goal the same as in the AYP format?  In ayp the goal is to go to christ consciousness and that is the meaning of the I AM meditation.  If she were to choose a mantra like "calm" or "focus" etc.. this has much less of a spiritual tie in it.  Personally I would not touch the I AM mantra with a ten foot pole in the school system, what happens if a child goes home and talks about visions, kundalini, chakras, etc...

I teach a very small class (last year only 7 kids), they label the kids autisitc. I did exercises/asanas and deep breathing with my students last year and one of  them lost a significant amount of weight 15lbs, and the parents were very pleased and also saw increased mental abilities from the child.  sometimes in life you cant go all the way, but half way can be a great option[]
my best to your friend
Neil

[yogani]

Hi Anthem:

7-10 years old is a bit young to start deep meditation. Here are some AYP guidelines on teaching children: http://www.aypsite.com/plus/256.html

Wonderful to get them started early, but careful not to overdo with those still developing nervous systems.

All the best!

The guru is in you.

[Anthem]

Thanks for the pointer to the lesson, makes sense, will likely just start them with some basic asanas then and make it fun for them.