The Holistic Life Foundation will discuss teaching yoga and mindfulness to today’s youth. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of the needs of today’s youth in diverse environments, and will learn new yoga and mindfulness skills to help fulfill those needs. Through a combination of practice, lecture, and exercises, you learn movement, centering techniques, mindfulness practices, and meditations. You also learn youth engagement principles, teaching philosophies, and strategies for working with “problem” students, while exploring methods to make the whole approach practical and, most of all, fun. This is an exceptional opportunity for anyone at any skill level in yoga and mindfulness interested in teaching these techniques to today’s youth, including teachers, yoga instructors, and helping professionals who wish to use the techniques in their practices.
Ali Smith learned yoga and meditation from his parents, and by visiting ashrams as a child. He has over 12 years of experience teaching yoga and mindfulness to diverse populations. He has helped develop and pilot yoga and mindfulness programs with at-risk youth at drug treatment centers, mental crisis facilities, and in many other underserved communities around the world.
Atman Smith is a native of Baltimore, MD who's parents were yogis that taught him contemplative practices as a very young child. For the past twelve years he has been teaching yoga and mindfulness to a diverse population.
Andres Gonzalez has been practicing and teaching yoga for the past 12 years to diverse populations. For the past three years, he has partnered with the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health and Penn State’s Prevention Research Center on a federally funded yoga and mindfulness based study involving urban youth.
