Rainbow Dreams and Art Blog

Autumn is definitely upon us…you can tell by the spectacular colors of the trees…but to me it doesn’t feel like October, especially not today. It was SO warm and sunny, a day I will remember when the colder autumn winds begin to blow.

It has only been about a week, but a month of ups and downs, leaving old things behind and finding new. Old friends reappearing and some newer friends disappearing. These changes bring with them both joy and sadness. But today, the warm sun melted away any sadness, and I felt as though I could begin anew. There are SO many new opportunities each day when I awaken.

I am back to painting window murals at the North Oakland YMCA, a project that doesn’t pay anything but satisfaction. Sometimes for me, meeting the challenge and having it turn out the way I want is the best payment there is. I can only hope the work I did has been a great advertisement for our upcoming YMCA Halloween events! We will see! Today I also began painting aliens on the windows at the Y, with more alien invaders on their way…fun! Our theme for HAY (Halloween at the Y) this year is Alien Invasion! Any day that I get to make art, is a wonderfully satisfying day for me.

The best part of my day was spending at least a good portion of it with my girls. I know they enjoy being with people their own age, but today we seemed more like girlfriends and it was fun. We met at the Y after my volunteer work (and their volunteer work) was finished, and we went and had an early dinner. We came home and did some much-needed work around the house and the yard. Then we all went on a bike ride which turned into a real adventure (for me). For some reason they took me on this adventure into a world I didn’t know existed, until now, and it was cool. Also, it was a nice workout! We also saw deer galloping all around us, rabbits, birds, and many wonderful autumn colors. The weather was perfect and the afternoon felt perfect. We laughed together and I wanted to write it all down, or paint it in a picture.

At last we came home and worked on our Halloween decorations. We had a nice time doing that as well, as our Golden Retrievers, Comet and Chili, supervised our work. Then, we had to go to Van Huessen Farm, where the girls had volunteered today, to see the jack-o-lantern display there in the evening. They had carved a pumpkin as well, so we got to see it on display with the others. There were hundreds of glowing jack-o-lanterns lighting up the dark night. It was breathtaking. We walked around looking at the pumpkins, and waited until 9pm had passed so we could take their jack-o-lantern home. It was so much fun. I loved seeing how children and adults had created their beautiful and expressive art on pumpkins! SO many creative ideas.

The funniest part of our evening was our trip to Party City to look for witch capes for the girls. There were these two young guys working there who were dressed up in these outrageous costumes and they followed us around the store, flirting with with the girls the entire time. The one guy had a skirt on, and was asking us if skirts were always this uncomfortable to wear. What a perspective you get shopping with your teenage daughters when there are young men around. So funny. Halloween seems to bring out the creativity and adventurous feelings in people. I love Halloween!

Speaking of Halloween, I am looking forward to telling/singing the poem, The Skeletons’ Ball, translated from Spanish by my teacher, Sydney Solis! I will begin practicing it and my plan is to tell it at the HAY event, Halloween at the Y! I received it this weekend, and it sounds great!

Tags: Art, Art activities, Creative Writing, Personal Storytelling, Storytime Yoga by Lisa
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Today is a lovely autumn day that feels a bit like summer! The sky has that hazy summer sky look and the air is warm and moist with a gentle breeze blowing every now and again. The sun is shining and I feel like smiling.

Lots of new experiences to share, for sure! First, about Eischens Yoga! This past weekend, my teacher, Kari Tomashik was in town, and I went to her workshops on Saturday in Ferndale. What an amazing experience I had! It was awesome to learn so many new things, and to leave there feeling light as a feather, yet grounded and peaceful. I learned how working in the standing poses and getting my legs working really helped me to feel more comfortable when seated. I actually did not have to use my neck and shoulders to hold me up when seated! I also learned some things about myself, how I try to use my neck muscles to make my legs work in downward dog. Currently those two parts of my body are connected. I began to learn to allow the muscles in my neck to relax. It is a process. It is about me getting out of my head.

Equally rewarding was seeing several of my students who were able to attend Kari’s workshops as well! It was wonderful to share the experience with them, and to see how it supported and nourished their own practice.

More new experiences. I began teaching kids classes again this week, after several weeks off. I love the time I spend with kids of all ages! My newest job is at the Auburn Hills Community Center. What a beautiful facility it is and I get to teach in a really warm and beautiful studio. I loved the kids who came to my first class yesterday. It is a small class right now, but I believe it will only continue to grow. Storytime Yoga
is a wonderful method for sharing the beauty of yoga, story and art. I am finding these techniques continue to become more of a resource to me. I am looking forward to sharing this with more children, their parents, their caregivers.

This week I began with my favorite story, The Peddler’s Dream. What a fun and lively tale it is to tell! In my class at Auburn Hills, we also created books to record our own dreams, our favorite yoga poses, whatever we wish! Already one of the older girls in the class was recording her favorite pose. It made me feel great!

This morning I taught in ChildWatch at the North Oakland YMCA. I currently do half hour classes there on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. The kids are much younger than I usually get a chance to work with. They are preschool, but most are very young. Today they looked as if they did not want me to leave!

On my art project ideas pages, I will share with you the projects we do in my classes for the next 6 weeks! It should be a LOT of fun! Many adventures to be had!

Happy Autumn!

Lisa

Tags: Art, Art Lesson Plans, Art activities, Articles, Eischens Yoga, Kids' Yoga, Storytelling, Storytime Yoga by Lisa
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It’s a warm, breezy, summer evening, the kind of evening that feels like it will go on forever. As I reflect upon the week just past, I am grateful for the many opportunities that I had to connect with others…my students of all ages, my friends, and my family. It was truly a week of ups and downs, of losses and of gains, of reminiscing, and of learning and looking forward to new discoveries.

This week, while the losses got me down, I rejoiced in the new connections. While I grieved for my cousin who died this week, and for her family who will miss her, I found hope and joy in being reunited with relatives separated by time and distance. While I felt the loss of a favorite supervisor leaving, I was met with the promise of bright, new opportunities ahead of me. It is all life; of beginnings and endings and in betweens.

The Dog Days of summer continue, even as I know they are coming near to an end. Each week, I enjoy my kids in the YMCA Day Camp, and I get to know them better, to watch them grow as they create amazing things. Often there are new faces, or the reluctant kids join in when they see the fun we are having. This week’s them was Jungle Safari, and on a whim I decided to try our hand at the same Animal Finger Puppet project I did with my teens in our home school group. It was a great success, as the kids came up with the most creative ways to express themselves with clay and the many goodies I brought with me. It was interesting to watch how they learned from each other and began adding accessories to their animal puppets, such as hair, capes, hats, guitars, bows, and cups. Very cool!

Here are some images of our art. Click on thumbnail images once or even twice to enlarge!

On Thursday afternoon, we did a fun yoga session where we began with a Seashore Warm-up, and ended up crashing our boats on a Jungle coast. We each had a favorite jungle animal and we made up our own tale using those animals, and inventing poses for our animals. Of course we included some old favorites too, such as cobra pose, lion’s pose and crocodile pose. We had a great time – the kids have such great imaginations! We ended with an activity for meditation that the kids really enjoyed. I brought in fabric, and we created Yoga Animal Flags. It was a lot of fun to come up with symbols for our flags, and show the animal friends we wanted to represent on our flags. We simply used permanent markers on fabric, and the results were very nice. This was a project that seemed to appeal to all ages and to boys as well as to girls. As always, the time seemed to go by way too fast.

Finally, as the week came to a close, I truly enjoyed my adult classes on Thursday. We have so much fun in our Thursday evening class at the YMCA, and it feels so sincere and heartfelt that we not only learn and grow together, but we share so much of ourselves in the process. It is the most joyful yoga class I have ever taught. I leave there feeling so uplifted that it stays with me, and I think again and again how lucky I am to be there. We have a recent Gulf War veteran in our midst, and it brings to my heart how much this person was willing to give for us all, and how he now needs to be cared for and to feel safe and that he can at least relax. When you see first-hand what war does to our bodies and minds, it makes you realize how precious is PEACE. In my heart I dedicate my classes and my teachings to this man, to my cousin Audrey who died a week ago, and to us all, that we can at last know peace.

May we all know peace,

Lisa

Tags: Art, Art activities, Personal Storytelling, Storytelling, Yoga by Lisa
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It’s been hot outside this past week here in Michigan! I’ve enjoyed my afternoons at the YMCA where this past week we had a nice “cooling” theme…”10,000 Leagues Under the Sea”…

Although we were not exactly 10,000 leagues under the sea, the thought of the sea, the cool ocean water and the creatures who live there was a refreshing thought for a hot July afternoon! On Wednesday afternoon it was Art Day. I really love how the kids who are there each week look forward to my arrival. And there are always a few new kids who join in for the fun. We began with sheets of black construction paper, and “drew” our undersea designs with glitter glue, and then once the glue was dry we colored in with oil pastels. It was a really cool affect that we achieved – almost like a stained glass window. Many of us created fish, sea turtles, dolphins and other sea creatures. I thought the finished art was outstanding, as it truly expressed a love for nature. I enjoyed how many children overcame their self doubts about their own drawing abilities, as when you try to draw with glue, you have a chance to try something new and unfamiliar. You stop judging as much and become less concerned with erasing lines. It frees you up to become more expressive and honest with your art, and it is more about creating and less about “trying to be something”. Some children tried to say they “messed up” again and wanted new paper. Of course I gave them more paper, but I took some of the pieces that would have been discarded and said, “there are no mistakes in art!” I created pieces out of what would have been thrown away, and showed them how some of my best work comes from a line or a mark that I at first thought was a mistake. The kids were amazed at how that was true. I am hoping they learn not to throw away their art, but that they see mistakes as opportunities to create something even better.

On Thursday, we had yoga class and we began with our sea theme, doing the Seashore Warmup that Sydney Solis has in her book, “Storytime Yoga – Teaching Yoga to Children” and it was the best Seashore Warmup ever! The kids came up with some awesome, creative poses for all the sea creatures we could think of. We did move on to Sun Salutations, and it was a hot day, even at the YMCA, so we cooled off with a longer story. The kids were ready for a rest! I told the Ukrainian tale of “Honesty and Dishonesty.” I was impressed with the way the kids attended, even amidst the chaotic nature of Aftercare, with kids coming and going all the while. Again, the few remaining children came up with some great pose ideas for some of the characters. It is so difficult to take resting pose of any kind in the chaotic room, so lately I have been ending with a centering mandala art activity instead. It is very calming and meditative and the kids love it. On Thursday, it was Rainbow Handprint Mandalas. I have some nice photos of a few of the works they created. Most of the kids again chose oil pastels on black art paper. Very nice, bright rainbow colors were achieved. One girl who had come to class for the first time, told me she was going to ask her mom if she could come to the YMCA EVERY Thursday! I am SO grateful for being able to connect with children in such a positive way, I feel so lucky and blessed by these children. Some of the kids who joined us for art this week were teens, and so I enjoyed the wide range of age and how the art was a universal connection – great for any age!

See Art Projects Page – Rainbow Healing Handprint Mandalas

Love to all,
Lisa

Click on images below to see a larger view!

Tags: Art, Art activities, Storytelling, Yoga by Lisa
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