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.
In-person programming in New York. Virtual programming nationwide (livestreaming or recorded content).
Chair and mat-based yoga and mindfulness classes for youth ages 3-18 right in the classroom.
On site professional development workshops for school staff. Online certification in yoga and mindfulness for children and teens.
Download a pdf overview of our capacity, services, and relevant vendor ID, MWBE certification number and other essential information.
Hear directly from schools we’ve worked with to better understand how yoga and mindfulness can support your students, teachers, and larger community.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Check out a quick list of our most frequently asked questions about training and certification.
LFY founder Jennifer Cohen Harper joined the Omega Institute’s community conversations series recently to discuss how we cans support our kids through the challenging times they’re living in. Listen in on the interview, join a practice, and hear a live Q&A.
Find the gentle strength to meet your anxiety head-on with this simple 10-minute yoga practice from Jennifer Cohen Harper, founder of Little Flower Yoga, created in collaboration with the Omega Institute. CLICK HERE OR ON PREVIEW BELOW TO VIEW
We’ve had a great time sharing 10-15 minute practices for children and teens live with Yoga International. We check in with our bodies and minds, move with power and purpose, connect with our breath, and have some fun. We’ve finished up our livestream series for now, but you can check out the past week’s practices… Read more »
I loved talking with Kathryn Ashworth of Yoga International for this article exploring children’s yoga and offering practical advice and encouragement. Check out the full article below and let me know what you think! “there are a lot of things to keep in mind as a kids’ yoga teacher, but as you continue on this path,… Read more »
Anxiety is on the rise in our culture, both for adults and for our children. As educators and caregivers, we want to do everything we can to reduce anxiety and help our kids thrive, but often our actions do the opposite, especially when we struggle with anxiety ourselves. Because we so badly want our kids… Read more »
Mindful movement is an effective way to reduce stress and its physical consequences. When we bring a mindful approach to chair yoga, we provide an accessible and simple way to integrate mindful movement and practice into our daily life to get out of our heads, into our body, to find the present moment. Increasingly, researchers… Read more »
We love this playful game, taught here by LFY Founder Jennifer Cohen Harper. It builds focus and concentration, and helps kids practice using their thoughtful brain to reduce impulsive actions. Plus, it’s a lot of fun!
A few years ago I decided to take on a position as a full-time Yoga Specialist at a charter school. I was ecstatic about the groundbreaking experience that lay ahead. It is also fair to say that I was totally naïve and in over my head regarding the enormous tasks that lay ahead: Design a year-long yoga… Read more »
The Kind Wishes activity is a child-friendly version of a lovingkindness practice, a type of meditation that can help develop compassion for others, and crucially for the self. In a traditional adult lovingkindness practice, kind thoughts would be sent to the self, to people close to you, to people you feel neutral about, and to… Read more »
As a high school teacher in the Bronx for 14 years I got to meet and deeply know a lot of teens. Having those relationships taught me a lot about what makes adolescents tick. I saw that the way adults view teens impacts the way teens see themselves, and ultimately the lives they think they… Read more »
As the school year begins and we have the priviledge of working with children from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences, it is essential that we work to create inclusive and welcoming learning communities. An important part of this work, particularly in public schools, is a committment to secularism in our teaching, and to respecting… Read more »
The peace corner is a powerful and touching space in the classroom that supports self regulation. It’s private. It’s structured. It includes choice. It’s an experiment. It’s inviting. It’s a movement toward independence onto the mat (or the desk or the rug spot) and ultimately into everyday life. It’s called the “peace corner” because there… Read more »
With the increase of ADHD, behavioral disorders, child stress and anxiety, relaxation is becoming more and more important for children of all ages. With so much going on in their lives, children need to find time to simply unwind, put their feet up, and have some quiet reflective time where nothing is being asked of… Read more »
Yoga Service: A Working Definition: The intentional sharing of yoga practices that support healing and build resilience for all, regardless of circumstances, taught within a context of conscious relationship rooted in self-reflection and self-inquiry. While yoga and service have long been practiced together, yoga service as a unified field is new and growing. As the field… Read more »
Anchor breath is one of my favorite practices to teach my students. Anchor breath is the practice of using your breath to help focus your mind on one point. The instructions are to place your hand where you most feel the breath in your body. I offer three options: on your belly, on your chest,… Read more »
Life comes with a lot of challenges. Sometimes these challenges can lead to frustration. I find one of my most effective ways to empower the children I work with is to give them tools that help them navigate big emotional experiences, like frustration. What triggers frustration can be different for each individual. Some examples of triggers… Read more »
LFY founder Jennifer Cohen Harper was recently interviewed, along with Traci Childress, by Kelli Love for YogaDork on the process of creating Best Practices for Yoga in Schools, a guidebook published by the Yoga Service Council and Omega Institute. Read these short exceprts below and find the full interview, in two parts, on the YogaDork website. … Read more »
My first year as a yoga teacher was the best year of my life; it was full of unexpected surprises, so much love and loads of gratitude. I never missed a day of teaching and never wanted to. I wanted to be there for my kids, I wanted them to know how much I care… 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
We often ask our children to pay attention. Pay attention to your school work, pay attention to your father, pay attention to your teacher. But we don’t always have a clear idea of what we are actually asking of them. When we ask our children to pay attention, what we really mean is something along… Read more »
Yoga nidra is an ancient but little-known yogic practice that’s becoming increasingly popular as both a form of meditation and a mind-body therapy. It is a systematic form of guided relaxation and unique combination of alert awareness and deep relaxation. The literal translation of nidra is sleep. However, yoga nidra is a dynamic state, not the… Read more »
Tree Pose Exploration Tree pose is among the most recognizable of yoga poses for a good reason. It is a balancing pose that is both challenging and achievable, and once you’ve practiced a bit the feeling of steadily grounding down and reaching up at the same time is very satisfying. Tree pose is also the perfect place to… Read more »
Reading meaningful and engaging books can really add to a child’s experience of yoga and mindfulness. When we chose relevant books for our kids, we provide opportunities to connect more to themselves and the world around them by seeing themselves in the characters that they are reading about. When selecting your book, try to imagine… Read more »