Rainbow Dreams and Art Blog

This has been a very cold winter so far, and my entire world is buried in the icy January snow, with more on the way!  I’ve certainly been particularly busy lately, and it seems I need to spend some time on my blog here!  I figure if I am going to get up to date here, what better time to do it then my birthday, which is in a few days (February 1st!)!

This New Year, 2009, has brought about many changes in my schedule and activities.  Every day seems to bring a new opportunity or idea.  I am most excited about a month-long series of Storytime Yoga workshops that I will be teaching in Ferndale, for a home school group of gifted children.  These are called Fill in the Blank Workshops; what a cool and creative idea!  I am very excited about this prospect and will begin teaching on February 11th.

I am now teaching two senior (age 50+) yoga classes at the North Oakland YMCA, held on Monday and Wednesday, and I truly enjoy working with my new students.  I truly enjoy their insight, enthusiasm, and joy at learning yoga, and I love seeing the positive changes taking place in each of my students.  One of my senior yoga students just gave me a beautiful hand-knit scarf as a gift, and she even noticed how I love hot pink, and this is the color scarf she knit for me.  I love it and have worn it every day since.

Beginning this week, I now teach two yoga classes at the Auburn Hills Community Center on Monday nights, at 6pm and 7pm.  I love teaching in the community center; the students are friendly and appreciative; the staff is very friendly and helpful.  The building supervisor even helps me carry my gear to my car!  I love being around positive, helpful co-workers.

I am most excited about my beautiful birthday gift that I am going to very much enjoy playing, and that is my new mandolin!  I thoroughly enjoy being artistic, and this is another way for me to dive deeper into my creative side.  I am looking forward to learning to play, and I plan to play my mandolin during my Storytime Yoga classes!  I can’t wait.

I will post more often, as I adjust to my new teaching schedule.  I also plan to include more of my artwork on my site.  My latest work involves sunflowers!

Happy Birthday to me and to my brother, who shares my birthday with me!

Lisa

Tags: Art, Creative Writing, Eischens Yoga, Storytime Yoga, Yoga // Add Comment »

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 // Add Comment »

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 // Add Comment »

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 // Add Comment »