Yoga Recess Day Brings Age-Old Practices to Bright Young Spirits

The Yoga Health Foundation, a volunteer-based consortium of yoga enthusiasts, has declared February 28th as “Yoga Recess Day,”  the Yoga-and-Speechculmination of a nationwide effort to bring yoga out of the studios and into the nation’s schools.

The organization, which promotes the health benefits of yoga by providing one week of free classes in more than 1500 studios around the country, has already had success in getting the Department of Health & Human Services to declare September to be National Yoga Month. The latest objective is to engage children by helping school teachers bring yoga-style movement and breathing exercises into their classrooms.

The Foundation is providing free online resources like instructional videos and lesson plans will make it easy and fun for school teachers to integrate movement, stretching and breathing into their teaching schedules. This allows children to benefit from balancing their body and mind through breathing and stretching exercises.

“Although Kids Yoga has experienced unprecedented growth in the last few years and is now seen popping up around the globe, yoga and its many benefits are NOT financially accessible for ALL children and families,” the founders write on the organization’s website. With YogaRecess, they hope to bring the many benefits of yoga–enhanced ability to focus, reduced anxiety, greater flexibiltiy and muscle strength, improved self confidence and enhanced overall health–to all children and schools around the nation, regardless of their financial status.

The Foundation is partnering with a number of chidren’s yoga programs including Yoginos, Whale Yoga, Playful Planet, and Yoga4Classrooms to make Yoga Recess Day a reality. Hudreds of schools natiownde have committed to participating.

In addition to providing free educational resources, the Yoga Health Foundation has also created an online fundraising platform enabling parents and teachers may raise their own funds for ongoing yoga programs. 90% of donations made to Yoga Recess go as a grant directly to benefiting schools and classrooms to be used for yoga related programs or expenses. The remaining 10% is used to “power” the national Yoga Recess campaign.

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