152: Yoginis Yoga Training with Susan Hartley

Yoginis Yoga - Specialists in children's well-being and mental health online and onsite training for teachers and childcare providers.

Susan Hartley was one of the first children‘s yoga teachers in England having trained with ‘Yoga Bugs’ before they became famous on ‘Dragons Den’. After several years teaching their storytelling based yoga programme in schools and nurseries, she found it exhausting constantly coming up with new stories and also found that this approach didn’t suit all children. Ever entrepreneurial she soon started to develop her own teaching methods and created the “Kind Hearts, Kind Words, Kind Thoughts” promise the Yoginis Yoga Programme is based around today. Susan adds “This is how we co-regulate with the children. They connect with the promise and take it outside the yoga circle and begin to use it to self-regulate. Spreading kindness is key to happiness and so this is an essential part of our mission“.

Susan engaged with educators and began to study neuroscience and brain development, liaising with researchers in these areas specifically concerned with early years and found that children learn best through routine, structure and repetition in a fun, non-threatening environment and that the first seven years of life are crucial in determining the adults we become. She used this knowledge to move away from teaching yoga as a purely physical activity which was entertaining to children to actually using these ancient techniques to enhance children’s learning and to embed healthy habits and breathing and mindfulness techniques as skills for life.

Teaching in this new way proved to be successful and she soon became known locally as ‘Yoga Sue’!

Literally thousands of children have benefited from what has now become the core Yoginis Yoga programme over the years, both in mainstream and special needs settings. As people increasingly began to notice the effectiveness of this unique programme, more and more settings wanted to book sessions, but Sue couldn’t be everywhere and one day someone asked if she could teach teachers how to deliver these sessions, and the idea for Yoginis Yoga Training was born.

The majority of children‘s yoga programmes work by training yoga teachers or those with a general interest in yoga, but Yoginis Yoga are different, they believe that educators are best placed to deliver their grab and go programmes as they know the needs of the children and the yoga programmes can be used as full sessions and as part of school day and as such they specialise in children’s mental health and wellbeing training for educators of children aged 2-11.

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Show Sponsor

The National Association for Primary Education speaks for young children and all who live and work with them. This includes parents, teachers, governors and all those interested in primary education. NAPE is a non-political charity and works tirelessly to support teachers in the classroom. NAPE leads the Primary Umbrella Group of thirty primary subject associations and unions and gives teachers and schools a voice at governmental level at consultative meetings with ministers for schools.

For full details of how they can support you please visit their website at nape.org.uk