Communication from Soul to Soul: Parents and Their Teenagers

In previous post we mentioned the practice of yoga and meditation as tools that have proven to be very useful in preventing aggressiveness and violence. We were searching for a professional to write a post about this when we met  a woman, mother and yoga teacher Christine McArdle Oquendo who has worked for years in Family Yoga. But before leaving you with her post, I will say that when we met, Christine invited me to attend the classes that are taught by her collaborators, Victor Martín (FB: Proyecto Karma) and Jose Luis Pizarro (FB: Creciendo con el Yoga), and the truth is that her approach has surprised me. They are professionals who, above all, are people involved in an integral and human growth, combining physical, neurological and emotional knowledge, making classes into an life learning experience that I honestly recommend. Here you have this post about the Communication from the Soul between Parents and Teenagers. Namasté.

We want to warmly welcome Christine, founder of OM SHREE OM.

In our daily lives, where and when parents and teens share profound moments of honest communication soul-to-soul? Moments where they both can express their emotions and feelings totally free… without feeling judged…

Where can they both learn about their physical bodies and feel them growing, moving or relaxing with complete freedom and security? Where can they laugh out loud, as it only happens among friends or where can they drop a subtle tear naturally, without feeling embarrassed? Where can you find that sacred environment, where everyone feels respected, valued and accepted as they are?

In this place, you may enter agitated and anxious; but you come out with a renewed body and a raised spirit, the mind in calm … Here you learn a lot of practical tools to better carry your everyday life at all levels: corporal, mental and spiritual. In this space, all family ties grow and get reinforced. It is a place where you can come to understand profound concepts of existence itself; where we speak One to One, Soul to Soul, father/mother to child and vice versa. Here compassion and empathy emerge. Here the most important lesson is to understand, be and feel the love within you, in everyone and everything.

I can only think today (in the XXI Century, modern city, western world) of a place where I have seen the development of these potentialities: in yoga classes designed for teens and their parents. 

In this very critical time of the life of an adolescent who is going through an epic period of growth and maturation, safe spaces are needed; almost shelters, where aspects of the self can be explored and celebrated.

At this critical time in the life of the parents who are in the process of letting their children fly away, spaces where they can share dreams, values and feel safe are needed… where they can strengthen their relationship and move forward with calm and clarity.

I think yoga classes with adolescents alone are fundamental, but sharing these spaces with parents is extraordinary. I think they are able to greatly enrich and even heal their relationship. In a yoga class no one is better than the other; we learn to accept ourselves as we are. We work from the point where we are and no other. There’s no competitiveness. No one demands anything. You are not obliged to do what you don’t want to do. There are no strict rules. Nobody pushes you beyond your limits. We simply look for a supporting place where you can spend some nice time with your family, sweet, lovely, where we met each other and we let us be … Here we move, breathe, expand, explore, focus and release those things that do not serve us …. We make room for the new, the essential, the beautiful, what is really is valuable in this life.

I haven’t found any young man who did not like the practice of yoga. Everyone has something they loved… “The breaths, I use them every day when I’m at a point of conflict or frustration” … “the relaxation techniques, I use them at night when I can’t sleep” … “the postures help me with the dance or with the football or my lumbar pain”. Many say directly,” this is what I was looking for, now I understand why I got so sad or why I felt others so much”, “we should do this every day”. (In TESTIMONIALS you can read the one from Marcelo-18)

Sitting comfortably, breathing the tranquility and exhaling the difficulties of everyday life, becoming aware of the present moment in which we find ourselves, how our body feels … Breathe … Relax … We join together the backs of the parents with their children’s, looking to synchronize breaths, getting to the essence of the other. These are things that can be done in a yoga class in family, teenagers with their parents; this is to have a soul-to-soul conversation… “Give the best of you. The person behind you deserves everything. You deserve everything. How fortunate you are and we are to have each other”. I know that creating spaces where parents and their teenage children can share these moments of confidence, peace and love, joy and fun, can be the laboratories where the change we so badly need as a society takes place. Soul-to-soul conversations taking place during these juvenile stages of life instead of twenty, thirty and fifty years later.

And where do we find these guides prepared to encourage these conversations and these activities? Are they therapists? Are they school teachers?

They could be both, but they have more training that is not only in teaching or psychology. In the yoga training for children and adolescents of Om Shree Om, whose name is a play on words that invoke “home sweet home”, we train teachers on yoga and mindfulness for children and adolescents, to be this type of guide. We get a range of people, from yoga teachers, mothers / parents, teachers, to health professionals. 

In addition to providing all the basic tools you need to guide children through a regular yoga class (postural alignment, alternative pedagogy, emotional intelligence, among other useful topics), we offer a training that invites you to browse your personal spiritual world, to understand, heal and expand. You’ll be able to invite and accompany your students / children on this journey of yoga; an epic yoga, where you create appropriate spaces for transcendental experiences to happen … where the true meaning of the word yoga, “union” is manifested.

Love,

Christine

Christine McArdle Oquendo  is the founder of yoga and mindfulness training for children, OM Shree OM. Author of the book: OM SHREE OM, Cultivating the body, mind and spirit of children through yoga. Facebook: Yoga Para Niños Om Shree Om