Without this hour to find some quiet, there might not be another opportunity…

by Rebecca Yarmuth

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There are so many ways in which we over-book, over-whelm, over-schedule, over-nurture, over-indulge our kids. Living in a place like Boulder, it is easy to do. There are endless activities and options for kids, many of which begin after a full day of school and continue into the weekend. For those kids who are not booked with rock climbing and Nordic skiing classes, there are many who spend long days in a school building attending back-to-back classes, leaving to work or raise their young babies, coming up for air only for brief interludes. The pace we ask many of our kids to keep is frantic, but it is also the reality of our culture.

Yoga classes with TWI offer a perfect antidote to the frenzied pace of our kids’ lives, while still working within the overall structure of their world. It can be scheduled into the school day (thanks to schools adopting this as an important part of their curricula) or into their afternoon and weekend activity-marathon. But, even if it is one more thing in an already too-busy schedule, it is the one thing that can slow things down, get us to remember our breath (what is that!?), and re-center us so we can tackle (or decide not to tackle) all that lies ahead.

As a school administrator, I know how eager my students are to stop, quiet their minds, do a relaxation exercise, breathe. When I visited a TWI class at New Vista High School there was a palpable sense of urgency amongst the students to slow down, and the urgency seemed to stem from the fact that without this hour to find some quiet, there might not be another opportunity.

Wellness is about many things, but one of them is balance. TWI is offering this precious commodity to students who need it most—whether they need it because their lives are filled with privileged activities or the reality of being a teenage parent. In both cases, and all the cases in between, pausing to find one’s breath, check in, and practice yoga is where we should all be offering our support.

Rebecca Yarmuth, TWI Board Member &
Director of Admissions and Development at the Watershed School, Boulder

Filed Under Board member | 4 Comments