Poised for Possibility: Peace-In

A regular Yogiño student helps me teach
Arbol/Tree/Vrksasana.

by Beth Reese


Peace begins with a smile.
~ Mother Teresa

Today is International Peace Day. To celebrate, I spent my morning with the OHMazing™ students, faculty and families of Mi Casita Montessori School. My youngest daughter, Andersen, attends the school and I was honored to be invited to participate.

We played with two simple ideas. First, like Mother Teresa is noted for saying, peace begins with a smile. Next, Peace or paz in Spanish, starts with each of us making good—or OHMazing™—choices. Toward those goals, we donned blue to "wear our peace proudly" then danced, laughed, looked, listened, held hands, and, of course, struck a few poses.

60+ students, teachers and parents celebrated peace
with a smile, as seen here in our
jardin/garden or variation of navasana.

There are numerous poses we explored in honor of the peaceful gifts the earth gives us—even right in the school-yard! Here we sculpted our bodies into trees, flowers, gardens, grasshoppers, bumble bees, butterflies, frogs and more. Perhaps one of the most memorable parts was performing through our kinesthetic intelligence that the first OHMazing™ choice we can make towards peace is to love ourselves.

One way I teach this concept is a very simple, concrete, timeless pose: self-bear-hug. In our song used for many Sun Salutations, Toco el Sol, we hug ourselves when we hear the word, Shanti.

Shanti means peace in Sanskrit, the ancient and melodic language of yoga. Shanti also is the name of our elephant-headed "mascot," as seen to the right of this blog post.

 

Toco el Sol/Touch the Sun

Yo soy OHMazing™    I am OHMazing™
Yo soy OHMazing™    I am OHMazing™
Namasté            Namasté
Namasté            Namasté
Toco la tierra            Touch the earth
Yo soy fuerte            I am strong
Soy alegre             I am fun
Shanti, shanti        Shanti, shanti
¡Toco el sol!            Touch the sun!
 

Guruji Gandi once said, If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.

How will you teach peace today? How will you share a peaceful practice with the children?