
Words by Han McGufficke
For the last couple of months at our beautiful little local primary school, St. Mary’s, Han has been spending an hour at the school every Monday of Term 2 for some movement and mindfulness sessions with the kids.
This was such a highlight of the week for Han, “the kid’s at that school are the most beautiful, well mannered and just such happy bunch. It was so nice walking in every Monday, to little smiling faces, a big wave, excitement and questions on what we were going to do today”!
Kid’s Yoga is SO beneficial. It’s not about doing usual flows, holding poses, being slow and zen. But there are huge physical, mental, emotional well-being and social benefits.
Each session included some fun breathing exercises, like balloon breathing, bubble blowing, dragon breaths etc, just making some fun ways to connect to our breathing without it being boring (Han had to keep the vibes high for those K-2 boys) as normal breathing was really not that fun LOL…apparently.
Han then moved into some slow warm up stretches, our normal yogi stretch, standing, some Cat’s and Cow’s (with sound effects obviously 🤣) then a mini vinyasa flow!

Each week we would have a theme, some of our theme’s were, Bird’s & tree’s, Australian Animals, Winter Theme. And we would create and practice all of our “normal” yoga poses into these shapes.
For example, our ‘flying bird’ was our Warrior 3, chair pose was our Kangaroo (with a little hop of course 🤣), the good old Warrior 2 was our snowboarder in our Winter theme and of course our Downward Dingo was out down dog – makes sense doesn’t it!

A main focus for the sessions was also teamwork and working together to create something special. We would do partnering or group exercises to implement this.
Standing in a big circle, in our tree pose to connect our hands to help each other balance, or out boat pose holding hands with our legs in the air to strengthen our core! So much fun and lots of giggles!
After Han spent 8 weeks with the students, she could see a huge improvement in their confidence, strength, teamwork, focus, balance and self-awareness.
“The students are very lucky they have such a great group of teachers that enjoyed getting involved and being a part of their sessions”. Said Han.
“I’d like to say a huge thank you to the staff and students at St Mary’s for having Saltbush Stretch involved in their learning programs this year, it’s very special to be able to get out in the community and share our knowledge and share our love of movement”. – Han
Big love. Han xx