CREATING YOUR OWN GUIDED VISUALIZATIONS
for CHILDREN
by Sydney Solis

The Greeks said that the soul speaks in an image. It is the image that arises from the heart and connects us to the divine within. It’s also the illusion, the obstacle of the sixth chakra, that we must let go of and pass through to realize the ineffable mystery of the divine.
Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. Imagery is an important aspect of teaching children any symbolic language, such as math, reading and even computers. A child must have before the age of six a rich imagination to master this relationship between symbols. Otherwise, studies have said, that children will be unable to learn as they get older.
Imagination helps us to create. By pre-visualizing things, it is then transferred to the paper, to the action in the physical world to create. How many of you watched Star Trek in the 60s and 70s only to find that a communicator is actually a cell phone! Imagination creates the whole universe and it was essential in the evolution of humans.
Another important aspect of imagination is that is allows the psyche to experience things safely. Jung said that if a woman dreamed she went to the moon, she really did go to the moon. The psyche doesn’t know the difference if it was real or imagined. Mythic play and visualization gives a safe container to act out negative feelings, fears or aggressions and desires that human’s experience. We need to occasionally stab Cesar to satisfy the dark side, the shadow, in our psyches. We need to visualize things that give us pleasure to evoke that feeling within and satisfy us.
Bringing imagination to a child’s world is one of the most important things we can do. We can easily explore and develop the vastness of a child’s inner world through storytelling and also guided meditation using imagery.
You can easily create your own guided visualizations to use with children – and adults.
I always teach yoga with a theme of story, which is either acted out with the yoga postures or brought up as a theme throughout the class. Before relaxation, allow children to call out the images that came to them during the story. Those “pictures in my head.” They can draw a symbol for that image, and tell about what it means to them or how it relates to that story.
Use a variant of yoga nidra for children to get them to relax. Begin with awareness of the sounds in the room, then awareness of their breath. Then call out certain body parts, such as the feet, the knees. This rotation of consciousness allows the busy mind to rest on the body and eventually relax into a deeper state.
For the youngest children in preschool, make this very short. Feet, legs, hips, chest. Older children you can take more time in calling out body parts. Toes, ankle, foot, etc.
Then guide the children to drop their awareness down to their heart center.
Here you can either drop in a symbol from the story or allow the children to use the symbol they created from the story.
Or, you can just drop in any image you create. A ship sailing on the seas, a rose blooming, a bird in flight, a river rushing through a canyon.
Allow children to create their own images that are appealing to them. What do they like? What makes them happy?Allow them to imagine people they love.

With their imaginations, you can also have them revisit the story you told as if they were the main character of the story. Have the child visualize the story again as the character. Ask them questions during the visualization as “What do you see? Where are you?” You can pull out main elements of the story and ask them to connect it to their lives. What journey are you on? What do you want in your life? What obstacle do you have in your life? What animal friend do you have in your life? What can you do to get help? Allow the child to let things arise, not force anything. It helps to teach them to rest their minds in the space between the thoughts to allow things to arise between the thoughts.

You can create guided visualizations by starting one off on a journey. Starting with a place, such as a forest, outer space, a boat sailing to an island. Have them imagine it in detail. What sounds, smells, and sights do they see?
You can add characters, such as an animal guide, a fairy, a person who greets them. What happens next?
Have them reach a special place. What is it? A bubbling pot, a magic door, a secret well? What comes out of it? What message is there for them? What image, object, animal just for them?
Have a return, saying goodbye, returning with a magical object that was found, having a feeling of safety, comfort, joy, or relaxation.

Allow the child to “talk” to the characters in their visualization. What do they say? Encourage children to do this exercise after relaxation as well by writing down the conversation. This is called active imagination and can problem solve for children. (adults can do this too!)

Design the visualization to meet a goal. If there is some anxiety, let children jump off a cliff in their mind’s eye to learn to let go. Let them feel the falling freely and safely. Let them enter a cave of darkness safely, and find magical gifts. What are the gifts? What magical abilities to they have to solve the problem they are having? If they need to relax, allow them to just sink into the earth. Perhaps they will journey into another world. Allow them to drop into this and play with whatever arises for them.
Have them invite a symbol to come from within to help them remember how to let go, to be courageous, to be relaxed. Encourage them to remember that symbol and let it rest in their heart, that it is available at any time they need it.
Let them draw that personal symbol and have them put it in a place where they can see it every day.

You can guide them with an intention. Such as expansion, connectedness, love for others, or gratitude. Ask them to think about images of expansion, love or gratitude that are in their own lives.
For example, with expansion, you could create a visualization that awareness expands from their heart, out to their toes, out to the floor, to the person next to them, to the door, out the door. You could use the same visualization for connectedness.

During meditation, ask children to create an affirmation in the positive. Such as, I am smart, I am kind. I am confident. Have them repeat it three times to themselves during meditation. Have them visualize an image to represent this affirmation.

In my book Storytime Yoga: Teaching Yoga to Children Through story, I have fairy tale shavasana for older children. Each successive relaxation allows a child to journey on an original fairy tale.
• Who is in the story? What happens in the character’s life that they are called on a journey? What has been upset in the character’s life that must be brought back into balance, healed, defeated?
• What is it that must be restored to bring life back into balance, healed, or vindicated?
• What secrets are there? What animals or magical helpers come their way?
• What obstacles must be overcome? What magical objects are discovered to overcome the obstacles?
• How is the problem overcome? What is the action that overcomes the problem?
• How does it end?

After the visualizations, encourage children to draw, write, speak about the images they saw.

Encourage children to contemplate the images throughout their day.

Have them pay attention to their dreams and keep a dream journal. Have them draw their dreams.

Encourage them to be aware of the images in their waking life. Such as animals, flowers, keys and doors, certain people, etc. to relate them symbolically to their own lives. This cultivates attention to the present and reflection on what’s going on inside and how it relates to their life on the outside.

Encourage children to monitor their thoughts. To listen to that inner voice, the chatter. Remind children that they are not their thoughts. They are something much more than their thoughts.

Above all, encourage children to practice meditation and relaxation at home! Even to invite their parents and friends to join them!

As a teacher, in creating your own guided visualizations, your own imagination is the only limit! Teach out of your own experience. What are your issues and how can imagery and guided imagination help you? What would make you feel safe, help you cool down anger, relax? What great adventures, joys do you have? Create your own visualizations and then use it on children. We are all human and have the same hopes and fears, joys and sorrows. You can connect deeper to your children when you share from your own experience and offer up the healing and joy you have received to them. Images are universal and it is the individual who will receive their messages for their own life’s needs. That is the connection of the outer to the inner, and the inner to the eternal.
Namaste,
Sydney Solis

Namaste! I just returned from a wonderful trip to Philadephia for a Storytime Yoga teacher training I gave. I am always impressed with the wonderful talent and dedication of the teachers out there and was grateful to all who attended. In our discussion, participants told me how they tried out the stories and yoga in the book and how kids cried out, "MORE!"
Children are hungry for stories. They are hungry for the inner life that the symbols in stories point to. Our culture's mythology is the consumer marketplace and everything created points for children to experience things externally. It takes them outside their bodies, such as tv, videos or uninspired pop music. Stories and the images children create from hearing them keeps them in their bodies. These stories activate their imaginations from within and activate seeds of their being to have a rich inner life. Studies have shown that if children don't get an imaginative life before age six, they are damaged as adults and have difficulty learning. Stories are a symbolic language, as is math, reading, computers. So mastering the relationship between symbols is important. Stories also can heal. Storytime Yoga is a form of play therapy, where kids can feel safe to explore their feelings in a non-threatening way. The listener unconciously makes connections with the stories, characters and images to their own lives, creating new possibilities and new hope. With stories, we can teach yoga philosophy...non-harming, truthfullness, greedlessness and so on, in a more powerful way than just lecturing.
Indeed, the genesis of myth and stories is from the Self itself, calling us with symbolic clues back to its SELF. We are all on the heroic journey of our lives. As teachers on our own journey, we can guide children there too with yoga and stories.
Storytime Yoga is expanding nationally for more teacher trainings this year. If you are interested in hosting a workshop and learning the power of yoga and stories, feel free to contact me at www.StorytimeYoga.com.
love and peace,
sydney solis

I have had bipolar, ADHD and just generally overexcited kids in many of my classes. No matter. I direct them into awareness of the body by calling out their bottom on the floor, their hands in their lap, and then by beginning with awareness of the breath in and out, in and out, the air in their nostrils, and then the awareness of and the space and people around them. Then I have them create some imagery. I ask them what do they want most in the world? What is their heart's desire? What is that picture they have in their head of that desire?

Some say to have all the food in the world, another to fly, another to live in California. I tell them that we have the ability to make all our dreams come true, if we follow the discipline of yoga. The discipline requires that we get our minds into harmony with our body, which in turn needs to get into harmony with our environment. That’s when the boons come. We are responsible for controlling our bodies and to be aware of our bodies in the space we occupy. Watch out!

I teach them that we do that with awareness of the breath and observing the mind. I help the children realize that their minds are like monkeys --- as Plato said ---jumping from tree to tree, from thought to thought. With a big breath we inhale our arms up over our heads and put a leash on our monkey, then bring our hands down in anjali mudra into our hearts and are calm and still as we exhale. Otherwise, I say, our monkeys escape with our energy, and it's too scattered to make our dreams come true. Turn off that TV! Monkey mind at work! Take another breath, reach those arms into the air, leash your monkey and exhale it down to your heart.

Another idea I teach is that our minds are like an apple tree, with too many branches-- too many thoughts. We get tiny fruit. We want to have only a few branches, fewer thoughts channeling that energy, into big apples and big dreams. Plump, juicy. Take a bite!
So we slow down. Close our eyes. Visualize a big, thick-trunked tree and when we inhale, branches reach to the big spacious sky --the space between our thoughts -- rest your mind in the space in between your thoughts -- and when we exhale, roots drop deep, deep down into the earth. And trees are so powerful, so full of energy, because they are perfectly still.
I ask them to find that stillness in the solid tree, the stillness in the big spacious sky, the stillness in our bodies - that stillness in between our thoughts - where eternity lies and the power to make all our dreams come true.

I teach 3-5th graders at an afterschool program at Creekside elementary in Boulder, Colorado. There is always a snack so getting right into yoga isn't an option. I use the time to check in with kids about how they are doing, and if they are eating well and practicing yoga at home. One girl replied that she shuts the door and spends peaceful quiet time at home and does the sun salutation. Another girl talked about her dream and others shared as well. ( I always encourage children to pay attention to their dreams.) Another girl talked about how she used breathing to deal with a difficult situation she was worried about. I used a Jewish story about "ifs" to illustrate how the mind puts on worries, and that it is our yoga to see the mind clearly and see the situation just as it is in reality. I often use multicultural and interfaith stories to show that these themes are universal regardless of belief.
I then went into the theme of the mind's thinking covers up our true self. I asked how many kids have negative self-talk such as, "I'm stupid, I can't do it, etc.," and many raised their hands. I went on to tell the story of The Roar of Awakening, a story from India, in which a tiger cub is raised among goats and thinks he is a goat, until one day an old tiger grabs him by the scruff of the neck and shows his reflection in the water. That he is a tiger, not a goat. So roar like a tiger! I used the theme that limiting thoughts are like a goat, but opening up to powerful, positive thoughts is being the lion. I asked them to think about where are they in between their thoughts? Who are they? Can you get a little space in between your thoughts and have your mind rest there? We had a few poses to be the lion and goat, simhasana and vashistasana, but I brought up the theme throughout class to watch the thinking, choose being a lion, choose greatness, love and peace. Afterwards, my assistant, Andria, took the children into shavasana with a magic carpet ride. Everyone was perfectly still, then afterwards shared what they "saw" on their journey. Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge. Truly the imagination, the imago dei, is our guide to the interior world and our true self. By sharing stories and encouraging imagery with children, we set them on a path of inner strength and self-reliance.