Christy Brock began her studies of yoga while an investment banker in New York City. Her life quickly changed from there into that of a full time yoga teacher. Now she is changing the lives of teens through forging the path of teaching teen yoga. iHanuman caught up with her during a Teen Yoga Teacher Training at Spiral Flight Yoga in Washington, DC.
Christy sat down with us to offer her insight into the challenges and delights of teaching teen yoga and training others to do the same. She also shared a short asana sequence specifically for teens.
For more information on teaching teens, including where to find a teen yoga teacher or teen yoga teacher training, visit Christy’s website: www.yogaminded.com.
Interview with Christy Brock on Teaching Yoga to Teens
Asana Sequence for Teens
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I am currently taking my 200 RYT training, with my population on Teen Yoga. I see you have a training program available, could you send me more information and possible resources for delving deeper into the specifics of the teen population for teens?
Sincerely,
Eileen Loh
Into This World Teacher Training Program, student
graduation May 2008
You can find out more information and resources on Christy’s website: http://www.yogaminded.com. You can also find her email address there to contact her directly.
Hafa A’dai Christy,
Your work is sooo inspirational.
I teach gentle and mixed level yoga to primarily adults. (primarily in their 40’s and up)
I volunteered to do a day of 3 separate 60-90 minute yoga sessions at a high school my friend teaches theater at.
He would like us to focus on Chakras and sequences to help them get out of their heads.
The sequences that you demonstrated on your video on this site as well as tips were marvelous. I would probably first start out with warm-ups and basic alignment concerns before jumping into the flows as well as pranayama for centering and relaxation at the end.
If you would be so kind as to give me any other tips or sequences I could use with this population I would be so appreciative.
Have you worked much with Chakras with teenagers? My friend would educate them about it from hand-outs I’ll give him before I come to the school to prepare them. I thought I could illustrate how different poses help to open up target chakras, and have them visualize the color associated with each one. Any other ideas are more than welcomed.
I’m really looking forward to teaching teenagers for ‘the day’.
Happy New Year.
Namaste,
Linda
I am a registered yoga teacher in the akhanda tradition (Yogi Vishvketu/babaji) though I teach a variety of styles. I’ve been delighted to work closely with teens for the past couple of years and find it to be an enriching and yes challenging experience at times. I also find that teens not only respond well to variety but indicate that they prefer change…however, its been my experience that this is less because it hones their listening capacity, but more so because teens get bored by repetition. Their endurance and stamina is less that of an adult (think of the getting- up -and -going -to- school -everyday -syndrome) and the fruits of that type of regularity is less apparent to this focus group than that of others. What I find works is to have small sets of repetitive sequences that I add on to with other targeted asanas…and each class I add another repetition onto this (such as sun salutation B) to slowly develop that endurance. Teens are honest sometimes….but they’ll also reserve their judgment and distance themselves if your not quick to respond to their energy. I give teens a healthy dose of direction but also allow them to direct the tempo, certain asanas, and their music. They bring their ipods (the only request is that the music won’t offend others in the room and we rotate who brings each class), they suggest poses to work on for the class, and they let me know if they’re too tired, too excited, too whatever to do a particular posture for the day. I don’t force them, I meet them halfway. Just like I do my 6 yr old or my husband. THANK YOU so much for this exploration, I will continue to find much inspiration from Ms. Brock. And thank you for speaking to the why behind your draw to this population…I had to laugh at the irony of being offered all these teen classes as my teen years were quite tramatic…it has been a beautiful opportunity to revise my perspective and to meet some unbelievably incredible people. Om Shanti shanti shanti
Jaya