Rainbow Dreams and Art Blog

Thanksgiving is only a couple of days away and it seems like a good topic for my blog today.  I am thankful for so many wonderful opportunities that have come my way.
The past few weeks, my time teaching Storytime Yoga in our North Oakland YMCA Childwatch, has been absolutely magical.  There is no other way to describe it.  The classes are only a half hour long, but when I walk in and the kids come running or walking toward me, smiling, I know why I’m doing this.  I silently give thanks for each one of these great kids.  There have been so many special times that we have shared.  On Monday evening last week, I introduced my pink, winged piglet, named Star, just as usual.  I talked about poetry and how Star loves to recite poetry.  I asked if anyone had a poem to share and to my surprise and delight, there were several kids willing to share poems.  It became a very special experience.  Then, I also introduced my Sophia, the Snake of Dreams, and talked about dreams.  Amazingly, several kids again wanted to share their dreams!  The cutest thing was at the end of the class, I asked each child to take a turn and show us all their favorite pose, and that we would all do it with them.  Well, the kids were so focused on poetry, that the first child actually recited a poem instead of showing us a pose.  So then I had us all do a yoga pose that could go with the poem.  If it had a tree in it, for example, we did tree pose, and so on.  It was great fun and soon all the kids were joining in.  Purely magical.  This is why I love teaching yoga, seeing the positive impact on others.

In my yoga class for senior citizens, it is so nice to see how much they appreciate their practice, and how they are grateful and happy to see me.  Just the same way that I feel about them.  I love all of my students and I love seeing them feel better and more at peace.

I have so much to be thankful for!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Lisa

Tags: Eischens Yoga, Storytelling, Storytime Yoga by Lisa
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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 already the fifth day of October, and my youngest daughter’s fifteenth birthday was yesterday. It reminds me of how quickly time passes. This is one of the reasons I love Storytime Yoga so much. It has really taught me to enjoy my time with my children, and to share as much time and creativity with them as I can while they are young. It won’t be long and they will be grown-up. Time flies, just as this past summer flew, and fall is already upon us. Soon the snowflakes will fly and I will wonder again, where has the time gone? So to be in the moment, in each moment, as much as I possibly can, with my own children and with others. It is all about enjoying them, and helping them. It is SO easy to get caught up in the day-to-day worries, the concerns about the world we live in, worrying about the economy. To teach myself to enjoy my children while they are here, is to also teach them how to live.

I am now teaching Storytime Yoga in our North Oakland YMCA Child Watch, three times per week. I love it. These are children who are at the perfect age to realize there’s more to life than watching cartoons on TV. I love the time we spend together, and I look forward to it each week. I do leave exhausted, but it is worth it! The kids need to feel that they are WORTH spending time with! Learning should be fun. Adults should enjoy them and nourish them rather than tolerate them or babysit them. I am excited this week because I am bringing in my magic wand which I believe they will LOVE. I will give them each some Storytime Yoga Magic with my magic wand before I leave. I believe they will get a lot of joy from it!

On Wednesdays and Thursdays, I am really enjoying my longer Storytime/After School/Tweens Yoga at the Auburn Hills Community Center. I have a nice group of children. Together we are sharing so much. What I love is how they are opening up to me and sharing things that are not always easy to share. We also made our own journals to keep and use for our classes. I think that will be something they will always enjoy having. We are learning some wisdom stories, we are learning some challenging poses such as L-handstands, and we are also learning about poetry. I am going to post our art projects/journal projects in the Art Ideas section so that anyone reading this blog can get some ideas on how to do the great activities we are doing in class. So stay tuned!

Another great love of mine is working with Senior Citizens. I adore seniors as much as I love kids. They are another wonderful part of our society that, like kids, we don’t spend enough time nurturing them and loving them. I love my time with my seniors. I now teach a class that is called Golden Yoga, at the North Oakland YMCA. It has become so popular that they want me to teach a second one beginning in winter. I love that I am finally able to spend time with this wonderful group of individuals. It is so much fun.

So the fall continues, and Halloween is coming. I am hoping to bring many more art ideas to my blog here, to inspire yoga, art and story in your lives too!

Lisa

Tags: Art, Creative Writing, Kids' Yoga, Personal Storytelling, Storytime Yoga, 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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