This is Your Brain on Stress
We all know that reasoning doesn’t work during a meltdown. Christyn chatted with Lani Rosen Gallagher about what is happening in their children’s brains ( and our own) when the sympathetic nervous system has been turned on, how to come back from the brink, and how to empower our kids with tools for self-regulation.
I began practicing Yoga in 1995, around the same time I started my teaching career in Boston. I had just obtained a Masters in Early Childhood Education from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA and left Boston to pursue a job teaching first grade in Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY. There, I discovered that yoga helped my kids focus and learn in an environment that was not conducive to learning. The seed was planted!
Yoga had become an essential part of my life. And with my love for educating, it was a natural next step to get a yoga teaching certificate. In the summer of 2001, I went on to receive my 200 hour certification at the Nosara Yoga Institute in Nosara, Costa Rica with Don and Amba Stapleton, an amazing experience that led me to start an informal after-school yoga class once I returned with my certificate. The kids loved it, as did I, so in 2002, I got my children’s certifications at Next Generation Yoga in NYC and later on in Nairobi, Kenya, and through the Radiant Child Yoga Program. Finally, with both certificates in hand, my strong background in education and a deep love for all children, I moved across the country to pursue my dreams. While teaching in SF, I took the Street Yoga training course and volunteered at a homeless shelter teaching yoga to the kids who lived there. From 2003-2007, I had been teaching in preschools, yoga studios, homes, after-school programs and shelters all over the Bay Area.
I moved to CT in the fall of ‘07 and have been teaching kids yoga all over the New Haven area since. Other certifications to add to my repertoire was the Circus Yoga Ring 1 teacher training, the Baby Om teaching training, the Mindful Schools Online Course and Yoga & Mindfulness Tools for Children & Adolescents with Jennifer Cohen Harper. In addition to the teaching, I have been facilitating trainings and workshops all over the U.S. since 2005.
My favorite classes to teach are family yoga classes now that I have my own little Yogi Zephyr. In June 2013, I raised $8,000 to go to Nairobi, Kenya to work with Team Next Generation Yoga for the Africa Yoga Project. On Oct 15, 2016, I co-chaired the first Yoga Reaches Out CT event. Currently, all my donation based family yoga classes support Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services in CT (IRIS).
Teaching yoga to children is my passion and my career. I’m always looking for another chance to improve the lives and futures of children by practicing yoga with them and playing healthy games that help them find joy, laugh, love and grow.