Why Mindfulness and Yoga
We have 31 incredible team members teaching kids, training adults, supporting operations, and more. Come get to know us.
Explore the benefits of embodied mindfulness practices and learn how they help build resilience, support learning and cultivate healthy communities.
Hear directly from students about what mindfulness and yoga mean to them in daily life.
The School Wellness Project
Virtual programming available nationwide (livestreaming or recorded content). In-person programming in select locations.
Chair and mat-based yoga and mindfulness classes for youth ages 3-18 right in the classroom.
Professional Development workshops for school staff + video resources for students, to help build yoga and mindfulness in-house culture and capacity.
Support for the physical, social, emotional, and professional well-being of all school employees, teachers, paraprofessionals, clinicians, and administrators.
Hear directly from schools we’ve worked with to better understand how yoga and mindfulness can support your students, teachers, and larger community.
Certification
LFY Training is a comprehensive certification in yoga and mindfulness practices for youth 3 to 18. Registered with Yoga Alliance, and offering up to 6 graduate level credits (through our accredited partner University of the Pacific) training focuses on the physical, mental, emotional and social well-being of students.
Certification includes our Core Curriculum consisting of Level 1, Level 2, Level 3; Three Online Courses (6 content hours each) addressing trauma, chair yoga, and neurodiversity; Two Integration + Implementation offerings that include practicums (practice teaching clinics) and a mentorship program matching you with a teacher for personalized feedback.
Our certification is offered as an online cohort based course, which opens for registration twice a year. We also offer an annual training in person at the Omega Institute.
Check out a quick list of our most frequently asked questions about training and certification.
More Learning
Join us for a wide variety of ways to learn from home, gaining skills and insight to support your students, clients, and your own children. Many courses are eligible for CE hours.
We offer a library of self-paced course, ranging from 75 minutes to 6 hours, as well as a series of livestream workshops with incredible guest teachers.
Join us for a variety of live-streaming and in-person events including workshops, conference presentations, livestream Q&A sessions and more.
Resources
Tools to Help Families Raise Resilient Kids, including practice videos, books and card decks, workshops, and articles.
We all need ongoing coaching and support to integrate our learning, continuing growing as educators, and to chat with likeminded folks about the many challenging (and funny) scenarios that arise during teaching. The LFY Coaching Membership is open to our training participants and graduates at any level, and is designed to offer you tangible resources to support your career, on-going coaching, and a built in group of colleagues.
Easy to use resources for families, educators, clinicans and children + teens themselves.
Explore searchable content from our teaching and learning community, including activities and practices.
Contact
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Mountain Top Visualization
Explore this practice any time you need to take a break and rest, or use it as a safe, simple way to build up a sense of capacity and power.
Close your eyes if you’d like, or rest them on one spot that isn’t moving.
Imagine that you are sitting outside, looking up at a tall mountain. What do you see? How does looking up at the mountain make you feel?
Now imagine that you are getting ready to climb this mountain. Imagine standing and beginning to walk uphill. How are your legs feeling?
Take a full breath in and notice how the mountain air smells. Look around.
Are you in the woods? Or open space?
Are there flowers? Birds?
What else can you see?
As you continue to climb, the path gets steeper, and you have to work much harder. Soon you have to use your hands also, and your body is working very hard.
Imagine how your muscles are feeling. What is happening to your breathing?
Pause in your climb and look around. What can you see now?
As you get close to the top of the mountain, notice how you are feeling. Imagine reaching the very top.
You’ve done it!
Stand at the top of the mountain and appreciate the hard work you did to get here. Look out over the surrounding land.
If you’d like, lay down on your mat or wherever you happen to be. Imagine laying down on the earth at the top of the mountain.
Imagine how good this rest would feel after your long climb, your hard work.
Let your body sink into the ground. Notice the feeling of the mountain air on your body, and the steady support of the earth underneath you.
Rest here for as long as you’d like.
This practice and more like it can be found in our Yoga and Mindfulness Practices for Children Card Deck.
Explore our School Wellness Program for access to 35 video and audio practices for children and adults.
Feeling My Feet
This is a simple but powerful practice to regain focus and get more grounded when you are distracted or overwhelmed. You can practice it sitting, standing, or even walking.
This is a focusing practice, where you will notice when your mind is distracted, catch it, and bring it back.
You can use any of your senses to practice focus, such as focusing on what you see or hear. In this practice, we will focus on something we can feel.
Practice this activity standing or sitting. If you are standing, stand in Mountain Pose. If you are sitting, put your feet on the ground.
If you can’t reach the ground, bring something under your feet such as blocks, a box, or a firm cushion.
Bring your attention to your feet. Notice the place where they connect with the ground. Do your feet feel heavy or light? Tense or relaxed?
If you put more weight into your toes how does the feeling change? What if you put more weight into your heels?
Explore the sensation in your feet for a few moments, and then get steady. Bring your awareness to the feeling of your feet connecting with the ground.
As you breath in and out does the sensation change at all?
When you notice your mind wander away or get distracted, catch it by saying to yourself “distracted mind” or “wandering mind” and then bring your attention back to the feeling of your feet on the ground.
This practice can be used quickly and without attracting attention anytime you become distracted or overwhelmed.
If you’re on the go, you can even focus on your feet while you’re walking.
This practice and more like it can be found in our Yoga and Mindfulness Practices for Children Card Deck.
Explore our School Wellness Program for access to 35 video and audio practices for children and adults.
Wide Legged Forward Bend / Chair Yoga Break
Chair Yoga lets us bring the benefits of the practice to our every day life in a way that is simple, effective and sustainable. Try practicing a simple wide legged forward bend any time your body or brain needs a break. Want a bit more? Practice along with this 7 minute chair yoga video to release tension in your lower body.
Separate your feet wide and turn your toes out slightly. Make sure your chair is firmly on the floor.
Take a full breath in. As you exhale, bend forward at your hips bringing your hands to rest on your knees.
If it feels comfortable you can slide your hands down toward the floor and let your head dangle.
For stability press the bottoms of your feet into the ground, and feel your hips connected to the chair.
Hold for a few breaths. If it feels good, imagine letting your body release a little bit more each time you breathe out.
When you’re ready to sit up, pull your belly button in a bit and slowly come back up to sitting.
You can use this practice any time you’ve been sitting for a while, and feel like your brain and body could use a break.
This practice and more like it can be found in our Mindful Chair Yoga Card Deck.
Explore our School Wellness Program for access to 35 video and audio practices for children and adults.
Heart and Belly Breath
Heart and Belly Breath is a simple practice that helps us settle our nervous system, and connect to our own body in any moment.
We love using this practice as an opening ritual, as a reset after dealing with intense emotions, and also as a check in point after completing other activities. A great way to help students notice how a practice may change how they are feeling is to do Heart and Belly Breath both before and after, and notice any changes in their body, breath or mind.
This practice and more like it can be found in our Mindful Chair Yoga Card Deck.
Explore our School Wellness Program for access to 35 video and audio practices for children and adults.
This variation of Heart and Belly Breath is a nice option for a quick check-in, especially if you’re around other people and don’t feel comfortable with a full Heart and Belly practice.
Excerpted from Yoga & Mindfulness Practices for Children Activity and Coloring Book
Layers of Sound
If you ever get overwhelmed throughout the day, this can be a nice way to reset, and orient yourself to the present moment. It can be done in as little as a minute or two, or you can experiment with a longer version of the practice and notice how you feel.
We also love using this for our students during transitions (both between spaces and subjects) and for a quick re-focusing if they get distracted. It’s an easy one to teach older children to do themselves, and a favorite tool for bringing attention back to the task at hand when needed.
Sit or stand for this activity. It can be helpful to close your eyes, but if that doesn’t feel right, try looking at one spot that isn’t moving.This is a listening practice, and the first thing that we are going to listen for are the sounds that are far away from us.
Imagine opening your ears as wide as you can, and stretching your hearing way out beyond the room you’re in. Find the farthest away sounds that you can hear. Listen for as long as you like (5-10 seconds is great to start).
Now bring your sense of hearing closer. Find the sounds happening in the building or house you’re in. Listen for as long as you’d like.
Bring your sense of hearing closer.
Find the sounds just inside of the room. Finally, listen for the sounds happening inside of your own body for as long as you’d like. Notice how you’re feeling. If you get overwhelmed throughout the day, this is a great way to reset and orient yourself to the present moment.
This practice and more like it can be found in our Mindful Chair Yoga Card Deck.
Explore our School Wellness Program for access to 35 video and audio practices for children and adults.
