Explore the benefits of embodied mindfulness practices and learn how they help build resilience, support learning and cultivate healthy communities.
Learn more about the research in the field, and the work we’re doing with our school partners to evaluate our programming.
We have 31 incredible team members teaching kids, training adults, supporting operations, and more. Come get to know us.
Hear directly from students about what mindfulness and yoga mean to them in daily life.
Chair and mat-based yoga and mindfulness classes for youth ages 3-18 right in the classroom.
Professional Development workshops for school staff to help build yoga and mindfulness in-house culture and capacity.
Learn about programming and events that we offer to support caregivers and children.
Learn about ways we support mental health care providers individually and in school settings through education, resources, and with direct services to students.
Hear directly from schools we’ve worked with to better understand how yoga and mindfulness can support your students, teachers, and larger community.
Explore our comprehensive teacher certification program, and learn to support and grow the inner resources of kids 3-18.
Accessible webinars and online courses on topics such as managing anxiety, working with teens, building resilience, chair yoga, and much more.
Full day seminars offering 6 CE credits to Counselors, SWs, Psys, MFTs, OTs, SLPs, Educators, and Nurses
Educator focused online courses that offer graduate, CE and P credits.
Explore our comprehensive certification program, and learn to support and grow the inner resources of kids 3-18.
Join us for interactive online learning experiences with a wide variety of guest teachers.
Full day seminars offering 6 CE credits to Counselors, SWs, Psys, MFTs, OTs, SLPs, Educators, and Nurses.
COMING SOON
We’re working hard to create a great resource center for families here. In the meantime, please consider exploring LFY founder Jennifer Cohen Harper’s book, which was written for parents, and our card decks and workbook for children.
Looking for an LFY class in your area? Check our our Teacher Directory to reach out to training graduates around the world.
Easy to use resources for families, educators, clinicans and children + teens themselves.
An ongoing resource that allows teachers and schools to build capacity naturally, throughout a simple and sustainable implementation program that immediately benefits kids and adults.
Explore searchable content from our teaching and learning community, including activities and practices.
COMING SOON
It’s a wide and wonderful world out there, and we think you should get to know these folks doing allied work in the field.
Progressive muscle relaxations are some of our favorite practices to teach students and teachers, teaching you how to relax your muscles through a two step process. First, you systematically tense particular muscle groups in your body, such as your neck and shoulders. Next, you release the tension and notice how your muscles feel when you… Read more »
From my perspective, the aim of the yoga and mindfulness practice is to awaken a joyful freedom, a benevolent and compassionate heart in spite of everything. Gratitude is a gracious acknowledgment of all that sustains us. It is an appreciation of the moments of good fortune that sustain our life every day. It helps to… Read more »
NY1 News came to visit us recently at one of our school sites, PS 205 in Bayside, Queens. Little Flower Yoga is very proud to be teaching Yoga and Mindfulness to these incredible kids, and they had a blast posing for the camera. Check out the interview below, to hear thoughts from the kids, their classroom… Read more »
I've been thinking about how to bridge the school to home connection a lot lately and how it can be a missing link for educators and parents. Developing deeper relationships with families has become part of my mission at school this year. It's a big hope of mine that my students bring the life skills… Read more »
LAYERS OF SOUND: This mindful listening practice asks your students to explore what they can hear around them in an intentional way. Our hearing is so sensitive. We don't have any way to block out sound the way we can close our eyes to reduce what we see. All of the sounds around us are… Read more »
Each month we will take an inquiry or subject (proposed by you) and offer direction and feedback. Feel free to write in with your concerns or questions and we will answer and provide all the advice we can offer. —————————- Increasingly there has become more interest regarding yoga and autism. If you are a parent… Read more »
So… you dove into children’s yoga trainings, voraciously read and wrote about your experiences, apprenticed through the mentorship program, have been hugely inspired by your peers in training and how this work attracts so many different kinds of people, and now you are a fully certified Little Flower Yoga children’s teacher! Congrats! Your heart is… Read more »
Each month Lianne will be writing a reflection on each one of her songs on her soon to be released album, “Breathe In”. Her first song and reflection is called “Wishing Tree” and we hope you enjoy this as much as we do.…When you wish upon a star, Makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart… Read more »
In the Little Flower Yoga community The Whole Brain Child by Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson is revered as a treasure trove of insight for educators and parents, and rightfully so. Tricia Stevens explains some of the most poignant lessons she received from the book here. I would like to add that it’s also a… Read more »
As we embark on the holiday season, I am realizing more and more that joy is an essential quality of life that needs to be present when I teach. Oftentimes, joy gets knocked down the totem pole of qualities of teaching, in both traditional and non-traditional classrooms, and many people think feeling joy simply means… Read more »
As a children’s yoga and mindfulness educator I enter each lesson with a plan in mind, but there is also a grand scheme, my ultimate purpose for exploring this work with children. It’s my view that these life skills are a basic right of education, that there are certain underpinnings to what I’m trying to… Read more »
Recently I took Little Flower Yoga's Chair Yoga Basics training and I wanted to share my experience with you. The training was so much more than I anticipated and it shed a new light on the world of chair yoga for me. Too often I know thatI have given this style of yoga a stereotype and have sort of… Read more »
Did you ever have a moment teaching where you say something or do something that in retrospect was not supportive to your students? Yes, is the answer, no matter who you are (almost). Making mistakes is part of the nature of this work, and when you make a mistake or when you have a bad… Read more »
In my last fifteen years of teaching yoga in schools, community centers and studios, one of the most effective methods I have found for engaging adolescents is partnership. ! Developmentally, teens have a strong need for interaction. Unfulfilled, the need for positive social experience can drive young people to lives of loneliness, depression and long-lived anxiety.… Read more »
This mindful listening practice asks your children and students to explore what they can hear around them in an intentional way. Our hearing is so sensitive. All of the sounds around us are competing for our attention all of the time. Learning to attune our hearing to the sounds that are most important at the moment… Read more »
Simple tools to create more space in student/teacher interactions Every so often teachers are caught up in interactions with a student or even a whole class where they feel reactive. Anger arises, and it is very easy to say something regretful when we are caught up in the heated moment. Reacting from anger is… Read more »
“Give It A Try” So simple yet so full of power – yet so scary for some of us. This morning I was fortunate enough to attend a conference at our local Board of Education for my son. This was specifically for Special Needs Parents but one of the breakout sessions I attended was on Anxiety and… Read more »
Mentorship teaching was a very fulfilling experience. As this was my first time teaching, ever, it was a revealing, informative, and very humbling experience. When I first started, I knew it wasn’t going to be second nature but thought it would be fairly easy since I love what I’m teaching. There is so much more… Read more »
For many years Melissa Kleinman, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, has worked in medical, not-for-profit, home and school-based settings empowering children to identify and regulate their emotions, form trusting relationships and develop a felt sense of control. Through this work she has had the opportunity to introduce yoga and mindfulness to trauma survivors, individuals with… Read more »
The Caring Feelings activity is a child-friendly version of a Loving Kindness practice, which is a type of meditation that can help your child develop compassion, contentment, and a feeling of well-being. In a traditional adult Loving Kindness practice, kind thoughts would be sent to the self, to people close to you, to people you… Read more »
Well-Wishes Creating a practice takes time for all of us and for children it’s no different. In our home I like to think of it as building a house. First and foremost we have to build a foundation. If there isn’t a strong base with anything we may be setting ourselves up for failure. Nothing… Read more »
Nicole is a preschool, special education teacher and a Little Flower Yoga teacher and she found her inspiration after observing a child in her own classroom practicing yoga poses. Watching this young child practice yoga on her own will to regulate her feelings when she felt nervous gave Nicole the motivation to complete a 200 teacher-training program at Three Sisters Yoga in 2011. Her… Read more »
CLICK HERE FOR ENLARGED VERSION OF RESEARCH POSTER Database Coding and Interpretation: April 20, 2014, Colin Pearsall Social emotional learning (SEL) theory posits that a child’s capacity for self-understanding and self-regulation is a gateway to achieving personal goals and participating in the community. This research takes the reporting of SYP yoga teachers and interprets… Read more »
by Mayuri Gonzalez, The School Yoga Project Director and Little Flower Yoga Teacher Trainer Chair yoga is beneficial for teachers to practice during their long stretches of desk-time and for students, who spend hours sitting in their desks without many opportunities for physical activity breaks. Practicing yoga in the chair is a simple way… Read more »
My yoga practice really deepened and developed when I started to practice at home by myself. When you give yourself the opportunity to practice alone with only your inner guidance leading your movement (no online classes or DVDs!), it can open up a new opportunity for healing. There is much value in practicing… Read more »
What you need: Container, water, glitter &/or glitter glue, food coloring (Optional: dish soap, glycerin) (And bring kids of all ages – this is a favorite for sure)! Why to use: A fun way to help kids focus. Also a great way to teach children how important it is to notice how they are feelling. This… Read more »
This is a powerful form of meditation that can help kids learn to focus rather easily. There are various ways that you could fit this into a fun yoga class or add to a theme within a sequence of poses but I’d like to begin by making it as simple as possible. For me, I find that the best atribute… Read more »
Summer is here everybody and I have 2 questions for you. 1. Who is ready to run all day and night to keep up with the kids? 2. And who is ready to become a little wiser in helping them learn how to wind down and relax? I am fully inspired to write… Read more »
Vanessa’s first experience with yoga was a gift certificate from her husband for classes together in 2002. What she didn’t know is that it would bring her back to the centered feeling she had during her childhood as a gymnast when her dad taught her to meditate. A new mom when she and her husband… Read more »
The efficacy of yoga and other mindfulness practices are supported by thousands of years of tradition. Now, science is confirming the benefits for kids, too. (exceprt from Little Flower Yoga for Kids) Yoga and other mindfulness practices have been the subject of an increasing amount of research as they have become more popular in the… Read more »