The United States of You: The Fifth Chakra

On Tuesday, we practiced exercising and expanding our throat center - the place of communication and personal creative expression. We began in the morning with a fun experiment using shaving cream, liquid watercolors, and wooden skewers to marble paper. Good thing we stayed outside for this one!

Our yoga instructor, Ruth, had us making lion breaths, shaking up laughter milkshakes, and practicing temper tantrums with our arms and legs. The whole floor was rumbling and shaking with our movements and our voices! 

 

Next we worked with paint chip strips to create collages, and practiced writing true stories about what we've made. Our special guest, Munira, returned to talk about the Happiness Quilt we'd be putting together, each with our own individual quilt squares. We started assembling the elements on felt after mapping our happiness. We also created more wish tags to hang up in the park a little later this week.

And the lovely clacking of typewriters echoed throughout Maude all day as everyone took turns. Gabi even composed an original song and sang it for us on the microphone after lunch, showing us by example how to be courageous and creative with our voices! She exemplified opening her 5th chakra perfectly! 

 

 

The United States of You: Fear to Joy (Part II)

Week two of our summer camp began today and we have 9 girls with us for the week. This time around we have three returning campers and SIX new girls. We were all a little nervous and had butterflies in our stomachs as we circled around the table on the lawn, getting to know each other bit by bit and collaborating on a mural scrolled across the table. 

When Ruth asked the girls at the end of the day before our final yoga poses if anyone had encountered any of the emotions we focused on today - fear (anxiety, curiosity, wonder) to joy, Nico raised her hand and said she was afraid this would be a boring camp, too much like school, but she discovered it wasn't. And she continue, she was "worried we would only do like one project, but we did like A MILLION!" She yelped with her hands pressed to her cheeks, her features expressing utter joy. 

I'd say we're off to an excellent start.