This past Saturday I had the opportunity to go on a Halloween Yoga Adventure with a great group of kids. On our adventure, we exercised our minds and our bodies. We started our adventure off with Boo breath (extending our exhale and making a “boo” sound). We then played shake and freeze (we pretended to get our Halloween costumes on very quickly while using body control to freeze when “freeze” was called). After we were dressed we went on an imaginary walk around our neighborhood trick or treating, doing yoga poses on what we had seen and done on our walk (stars…trees…cat…bridge…pumpkin…bobbing for apples, etc.). After we completed our trick or treating, we relaxed by taking a few moments to notice our breath and what we had seen, heard, smelled, or tasted on our magical adventure.
In the second part of our class, we read the book “The Pumpkin Patch Parable” by Liz Curtis Higgs. The Pumpkin Patch Parable is a story about a loving farmer who turns a simple pumpkin into a glorious sight. The story weaves a beautiful parable as the farmer picks out a special pumpkin from his garden and scoops out all of the messy “goo” to make room for the pumpkin to shine from the inside. We talked about in the same way the farmer cared for his pumpkins, God cares for us and takes the yucky stuff away so our light can shine all night and day! We then did an art project to go along with the story.