Precious Future

I have spread my dreams beneath your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats

Mini Yoga Sessions During the Day at Your Desk

We know that exercise can cut our stress during the day by helping to release tension and toxins while flooding our bodies with the positive effects of oxytocin. Many medical professionals advise talking lunch-hour walks to fight stress at work.

But teacher's days aren't the same as other professionals. We often don't get lunch "hours" alone, we are usually responsible for playground, cafeteria or hall duty during our time. Teacher planning hours are seldom long enough to walk around campus.

A meaningful alternative is to steal little bits of time throughout the day to use for yoga breaks--not crazy goat-on-a-steep-hill poses which would dirty your clothes or make you feel nutty, but simple little stretches that can be incorporated into your day whenever you have a moment to stretch and breathe--even if you must keep thinking. Once you learn the poses you'll find ways to use them.

Marcia Langenberg, a teacher at the University of Alberta and a yoga practitioner, has posted an easy-to-follow series of tiny, free movies on-line showing indoor, seated yoga poses. You don't have to leave your room, or you can do these poses in a break room--some will even work in a bathroom.

The movies can inspire you to find ways to move and create a release for the day's tension, so they are well worth considering to add to your stress reduction toolbox.

Mid-Week Snapshot

A teacher's brain the night before grades are due, after reading 30 student essays.

We Will Prevail!

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above them. --
Washington Irving

We Don't Teach Well When We are Burnt-out

Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise.--Woodrow Wilson