Idea Space

IDEA SPACE, AN ABUNDANCE OF IDEAS
1.1 Waiting for a friend to arrive for lunch one day, I pondered teaching yoga to kids. I thought of helping them learn what their body could do before they got stuck into habits that limited their body’s potential.
1.2 I’d seen children who’s posture mimicked their parent’s almost exactly and I thought that if I could help them be aware of their body they could then choose how they held themselves. Aware of their body maybe they’d be able to operate it without artificially limiting it.
1.3 I thought of the habits or mannerisms that we picked up from those around us. If we were conscious of what we were doing and what those around us were doing we could choose the things we pick up, or at least the things we keep.
1.4 At one level that is what yoga is about, becoming more conscious, in this case conscious of possibilities. Aware of what the possibilities are we can choose the things we do and how we do them. Teaching kids yoga I wanted to help them understand what their body is capable of, as well as their mind, and rather than limiting them I wanted to teach them frameworks within which they could express themselves.
1.5
1.6 I’ve been living in Taiwan for a number of years now and before I started teaching yoga here I taught English to young children for a year. There are quite a few foreigners teaching English and part of my idea was to train those same teachers, those who wanted to, to teach Yoga as part of their kids exercise time. I thought it would be a great opportunity for them to learn to teach something as well as English. At the same time they’d be helping the kids as well as themselves stay flexible (or get flexible.) And I would get the chance to develop a training program that would benefit teachers as well as the people that they taught.
1.7 The other part of the idea was selling yoga to the schools where it might be taught, and in turn to the parents of the children who might be taught. I thought that perhaps one of the biggest things to sell it on is how it can benefit the mind, perhaps if the children stayed flexible in their body they’d also stay flexible in their minds, be able to think more creatively.
1.8 I wasn’t aware of any evidence to that fact and it seemed like a pretty slim connection and so I thought that perhaps the mental flexibility could come in the way I taught yoga. Teach the teachers, and through them the children a set sequence of poses, and then teach them how to vary the sequence and then the poses. Give them a framework and show them how to express themselves within that framework.
1.9 Another benefit, more in line with what the parents were sending their kids to English school for was that it would be a great opportunity for kids to learn about their body in English, or indeed in both languages, Chinese and English.
1.10 The school could possibly benefit by getting more students whose parents want their kids to learn yoga (as well as English) and perhaps even the yoga studio I worked for could benefit either through getting their name out into the community or in having a potential source for future yoga teachers or students.
1.11 Why was I so keen on this idea, because I thought that everyone involved could benefit.
1.12
1.13 When my friend arrived I told him about my idea and asked him if he be interested in helping me develop it and teach it to kids. He would think about it.
1.14 The next time I saw my friend I asked him if he was still interested in teaching kids yoga? He said not to worry about it. There were plenty of ideas to go around. That it didn’t matter if we did this idea, there were other ideas we could do instead if it came down to it.
1.15 In the last few years I’ve had a lot of exposure to talk about wealth consciousness, focusing on thoughts of being wealthy, of having lots of wealth as opposed to its opposite. And all of a sudden I realized that the real key wasn’t an abundance of money but an abundance of ideas. There are an infinity of ideas waiting to be made real.
1.16 Wow, imagine, not only picking the ideas we want to make real but having an infinity of ideas from which to choose from.