the winds of change

When Dana Crudo returned to work as a part-time schoolteacher at École Bilingue Elementary School in Vancouver after completing her yoga teacher training, she felt inspired by the idea of breathing self-knowledge into her school’s curriculum by way of yoga’s teachings. Rather than focusing on yoga as a physical education process, Crudo saw weekly yoga classes as a way of helping her students learn about themselves and expand their understanding of how they affect the world around them.

“We don’t always give kids a chance to talk about themselves, about their feelings and what’s going on in their bodies,” says Crudo. “One of my goals for the program was to create more awareness in the children on a social responsibility level – how developing an awareness of ourselves affects how we act.”

Full of a desire to make a difference with what she knew, Crudo joined up with an organization called Yoga Outreach in 2006 to form the Yoga for Every School Program, and weekly classes were set in motion. This was a new direction for Yoga Outreach, whose volunteer teachers have been giving free yoga classes at correctional facilities and community agencies since 1996. Sensing the impact they could have by creating opportunities for kids to interact with yoga’s teachings from an early age, the not-for-profit organization worked with Crudo to turn the idea into a formal year-long pilot program.

Crudo says that last year’s program has created a real sense of movement in the school’s environment – children have a new understanding of the effect of moods and words on the quality of their shared environment. “The kids started what they call a ‘smiling experiment,’ trying to get others to smile by smiling at them,” says Crudo. “The yoga classes have ended, but they’re still doing it.” To learn more about Yoga Outreach, please go to www.yogaoutreach.com.