I dimmed the lights; hit the play button on the CD player, and paused for a moment, waiting for “Zen Café” to start. I heard the synthesizer begin and walked to the middle of the room to gauge the space. The library’s staff and students had gone for the day and all was quiet. I was here to conduct Dr. Albert Bean School’s first after-school beginner yoga class. I’d been told that 11 staff had registered. As I scanned the list of names, the participants started filing in with yoga mats in hand. I greeted them and motioned for them to take their place on the floor.

“This is the Stages Yoga class, right?” asked someone.

“Sure is,” I replied, as I lowered myself to the mat.

“So, do we take our socks off, too?” she then said, looking at my bare feet.

 “That’s really up to you. I like working in bare feet because there is less slippage…and not only that, it feels good and you feel more of what you’re doing.”

That was good enough for her as she giggled and slipped off her socks. Others then followed suit.

We began moving through a series of warm ups as I explained in detail everything we were doing simply because I have found that students love to know what benefits they derive with each posture or exercise.

“Glad we were finally able to get this off the ground, so that now we’re on the ground!” someone from the back exclaimed.

I couldn’t quite make out who had said that, but it didn’t really matter. It was a clever comment. And a true one at that.

 “I’m in here at 7:30 a.m. every weekday and it’s rare I can leave before 4:30. I’m exhausted, starving, and can’t wait to get home. The gym is not really an option for me,” one of the teachers told me later that day. “Being that the school now offers yoga is just great. I just come to the library at 3:30 and do the class. No excuses!”

Enter the Alliance for a Healthier Generation

Thanks to Pine Hill School District’s commitment to the Alliance for a Healthier Generation’s Healthy Schools Program, Dr. Albert Bean School’s teachers and support professionals now have a convenient, inexpensive wellness program that staff can participate in.

Created in 2005, the Alliance for a Healthier Generation’s mission is to reduce the nationwide prevalence of childhood obesity by 2015, and to empower kids nationwide to make healthy lifestyle choices by working to positively affect the places that can make a difference to a child’s health: school, home, the doctor’s office, and the community.

The obesity rate among children has doubled in the last 20 years. That means that heart disease and high blood pressure are also on the rise. The Office of the Surgeon General states that of these obese children, about 70 percent of them will be obese as adults. We can’t wait any longer; we have to do something about it, and it needs to happen both at home and at school.

The Alliance for a Healthier Generation’s Healthy Schools Program recognizes schools that promote healthy lifestyles for its students and staff by awarding bronze, silver, gold, and platinum awards based on fulfilling its best practice criteria, called the Healthy Schools Program Framework. Minimums must be met for each award level. The Alliance currently supports more than 7,800 schools nationwide with its school wellness work.

When a school decides to join the Alliance and commit to its Healthy Schools Program, the school then receives support and tools for creating a healthier school environment including an extensive database of available funding and community resources. It can also include support for a healthier staff, such as yoga classes.

JoAnne Glass, a prekindergarten teacher in Pine Hill also finds the yogic calming breath useful with her students. “I’m excited about knowing how to do this now. It has been really helpful. The calming breath really works; it’s amazing!” she says. “It allows them to relax, focus on me and regroup and calm themselves. It’s great before rest time.”

“We can’t possibly be of any help to our kids if we don’t take care of ourselves,” explains Evelyn Frierson, a teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in Camden. Frierson serves as co-chair of The Wellness Council at the school, which recently joined the Alliance.

Karen Buonocore, the Healthy Schools Program’s relationship manager for New Jersey says that the Alliance has a host of resources available for its members.

“Teachers and administrators care about the health of their schools, but often need support in making their goals a reality with everything else they are responsible for in any given day,” says Buonocore. “The Alliance’s Healthy Schools Program gives schools the resources and tools they need to get on the path to a healthier school environment.”

Buonocore holds regular meetings with schools throughout New Jersey, helping them take the steps to a healthier school by assessing their environments, developing plans and pointing them to relevant tools and resources.

How does yoga fit in?

More and more physical education and other teachers are using yoga techniques in their classrooms.

On any given Tuesday at Merchantville Elementary School, you will find physical education teacher Patty Carr in the second grade classroom guiding the students and teachers in a calming breath session meant to clear the mind and calm the body. In her weekly “Second Step” program, a violence prevention curriculum being used by many schools throughout America, Carr finds the perfect opportunity to use yogic breathing techniques that she has learned in her own yoga training.

“The yogic breath, and specifically the calming breath, is key to making this “Second Step” curriculum successful,” says Carr. In order for children to solve a serious problem, they need to learn impulse control and the best way to do that is to calm down first. The calming breath—breathe in for a count of two, hold the breath for a count of two, breathe out for two, and hold that out breath for two—helps to achieve impulse control and mental clarity, both of which are essential in dealing with any stressful situation.”

Carr also adds that she incorporates yoga postures in her physical education classes because not only do the postures calm and release tension, but she loves the fact that she is teaching life-long skills that the children can take with them long after graduation.

And, of course, more and more school staff are finding that yoga helps them deal with the stress of the job.

 “We enjoy every Fit & Focused class,” adds Frierson. “We look forward to the stretching and the breathing techniques they show us. Much of the material we learn we can use in the classroom before and after our classes, especially calming or energizing breath techniques. We actually wrote Stages Yoga into our New Jersey Coordinated Schools Health Demonstration Project grant provided by the Centers for Disease Control. It was an honor to be one in only five schools in the state to receive this grant as a reward for our dedication to improving health and wellness in the school’s population.”

To learn more about the Healthy Schools Program, go to www.healthiergeneration.org.

Rossana Parsons is a yoga instructor and founder of Stages Yoga in Merchantville ( www.stagesyoga.net ). You can contact her at information@stagesyoga.net .

Parsons will present “Using Yoga to Enhance Thinking and Problem Solving” on Thursday, Nov. 4 at the NJEA Convention in Atlantic City. The workshop will be held at 9:30 a.m. in Room 309.