Mind Over Matter Yoga

✨ January Yoga ✨
We’ve had the loveliest start to the year in children’s yoga, taking time to move our bodies, calm our minds and connect with our feelings. In our intention class, we went on a yoga journey into 2026, “packing” an invisible backpack with things we want to carry with us this year - like bravery, kindness and confidence..while gently letting go of worries that we didn’t want to take into 2026, suggestions included “nightmares” and “dark mornings”!

❄️ Arctic Adventure
We travelled to the Arctic, learning about polar animals, moving our bodies to stay warm and finishing by finding calm and quiet inside a cosy igloo.

🌬️ Mindful Week
We explored calming yoga poses, invented our own breathing techniques and created special breathing wands to help us feel calm, focused and in control of our emotions.

So proud of how thoughtful, imaginative and open the children have been this January such a beautiful way to begin the year ✨🧘‍♀️

It’s children’s mental health week. In my humble opinion there’s no better way to help a child’s mind and body than to teach them from a young age how to look after both and that they’re equally important. Today’s class was The Colour Monster ❤️💙💛💚🖤💗 which is the perfect way to help young children begin to understand their big feelings.
Here are some other books which I use often in our yoga classes. They all have a beautiful message to send.

I am a teacher, but every week I learn from the children too. Little things like how their imaginations work and can take them off to a whole new world, they have spectacular ideas and before you know it, a class can take a whole new route or theme than the one planned. I’m always guided by them and I always have my bag of tricks with me too!

This week we went on an Arctic 🐻‍❄️ adventure. We flew all the way to the Artic to meet some incredible animals. I learned a thing or two too… have you ever heard of an Eurasian Ermine?! Neither had I, but my year one wonders could tell you a thing or two about them!!

Have I mentioned that I love my job? 💚🐻‍❄️🫶🏼

The cold snap is here and our classes this week have been winter themed. How lucky we were today to have yoga on a snow day!

Here’s just a few of the breathing techniques I’ve been incorporating into our yoga classes. I hope you like them & feel inspired to give them a try💚 let me know if you do!

𝐇𝐨𝐭 𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠
Imagine you’re holding a warm cup of hot chocolate in-between your hands. Inhale deeply through the nose, smelling the delicious scent.
Exhale slowly through the mouth as if cooling down the hot chocolate, be careful not to blow too hard and spill it!Repeat a few times, encouraging slow, calming breaths.
Of course, you could actually do this with a real cup of yummy warm hot chocolate!

🐉 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡
One for a frosty morning ❄️
Take a deep breath in and breathe out through your mouth with a haaaa imagine your breath spreading warmth through the icy morning, just like a dragon creating clouds of steam in the cold.
A very powerful visual for children which encourages deep breaths while engaging the imagination, helping children connect with the sensory experience of a cold morning and visualising their breath.

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐦 𝐌𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐬🧤
Imagine wearing cozy, warm mittens. Take a deep breath in through the nose, imagining the warmth spreading through your body.
Cup your hands in front of your mouth and exhale slowly through the mouth, feeling the warmth spreading to your hands and making you feel cosy.
Repeat slowly as many times as you wish.

𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 🕯️
Imagine a cozy winter cabin with a flickering candle. Breathe in deeply through the nose, filling up with warm, cozy air.
Bring your index finger toward your face as if it was the candle. Exhale softly through the mouth as if gently blowing on the candle’s flame to make it gently flicker without letting it go out. This takes control!

With each breath, imagine the warm light filling you with a cozy feeling. As you breathe in, you feel peaceful and calm. As you breathe out, you let go of any worries or coldness, blowing them away softly with your breath.

Time to recharge the body instead of the phone.

Balance has been restored. As one of my wise friends recently told me, I wasn’t made to be a caged bird. Teaching yoga gives me just as much as I have to give in return. A beautiful first class back with a wonderful group of children. This is where I’m meant to be. 💚

🍂🍁Autumn Mandalas 🍁🍂 This week’s classes focused on Autumnal animals 🐿️ and the children made some amazing yoga poses for the animals. We talked about hibernation and at the end of our class we made some beautiful Autumn mandalas. These children are four & five years old. They blow me away with their creativity! Here are some of their wonderful creations. Inspiration for your Autumn walks 💚
🧘🏽‍♀️

Sundays are for sorting my resources for the week ahead, excited to use these in class next week! 🪨 💚

Certificates and little token gifts for our yogis this term. It’s been another wonderful year of yoga fun, I have had an absolute ball. One of my yogis left today saying Goodbye Mrs Francis Queen of Yoga 🤣 so that’s how I’d like to be addressed from now onwards 🧘🏽‍♀️really made me giggle!
I can’t wait to meet some new faces in September and if you’re interested some twilight children’s yoga during the holidays, just pop me a message and you’ll be the first to hear all about our sleepy sessions! 😴

How do you feel today? 💙💛💚🧡🤍💗 This weeks classes are all about feelings. We’ve been exploring The Colour Monster and helping him sort his feelings out with the help of some puppets and my usual felt pens! We’ve been thinking of poses to go with each feeling. I made a special sheet for our relaxation and the children coloured in their own colour monster. They even made up feelings for colours that aren’t in the book. Purple was excited apparently! My favourite moment was when one of my little yogis said “when we do sadness we made ourselves small, which is funny because it’s a big feeling”
Everyone in the world should be a yoga teacher, it’s the BEST 💫

Rather aptly as the heavens opened with spectacular thunder and lightning ⛈️ ⚡️🌩️at the start of our class, here’s a calm boat! ⛵️
This week we opened our class by chatting about how we were feeling today. Lots of the children had plenty of energy! We noticed how we were breathing, (mostly shallow) And after our Sun Salutations we lay down with a hand on our heart and a hand on our tummy, I changed up the music 🎶 and the children focussed on how their breathing had changed, and of course they noticed their hearts were beating faster too💓.
I encouraged the children to share and think about ways that we can help ourselves calm down, answers included ‘mouse pose’, ‘flower breathing’ and colouring in! 🌈
Then we worked together to make these origami paper boats, the children each chose a phrase sticker from a big pile and decorated their boats.
Finally, after our calm activity we lay down ready for savasana with the boats on our tummies and I read a guided relaxation which took their breathing (and their boats) on a journey through stormy to calm waters, from breathing out our tummies to reverse breathing. It’s not easy and the children were amazing!

This week we’ve been talking about the Coronation. Since we’ve spent the last couple of classes learning about yoga flows and sun salutations it seemed fitting that we made our own yoga flow. The children had some fantastic ideas of their own and we talked about what other poses we could use for those too. I was blown away by my Reception class who made some impromptu ‘double boats’ which is a partner pose. It worked perfectly for London Bridge and there were so many giggles while they practiced, it really made the class so magical.
Another week of wonderful classes.
Hope you enjoy our yoga flow and some suggestions for the poses we could do. There could have been so many more but we’d have been there for another hour hee hee!
Enjoy!