Teaching breathing to 120 inner city kids

The past two weeks has been educational, exhausting, and very satisfying.

For the first time in a few years, I am teaching the Art of Living YES! course in a high school. What makes it even crazier, is that its a pretty tough inner city school and we are teaching 180 kids over a period of three weeks, four courses a day.

I should mention that this particular high school is not as rough either in terms of student behavior or administrative support as others I have seen. Its a newer school, and the administration is amazingly supportive. That said, the kids at this school have really tough circumstances. Two of my students have been expelled in just these two weeks (two that I know of), and others have experienced disasters during this period that would shut any of us down. One of my students had two friends shot and a third who killed himself over a girl, all in one week.

Ok, so those are the circumstances. But the really interesting part is seeing the evolution of these students in this short time. I am really amazed at how powerful the transformation in people's level of openness can be in such a short period of time.

If I was asked to do yoga and breathing techniques in college, I am sure I would have been a lot of trouble for the teacher, and initially most of these kids were resistant. However, even the most challenging of the 6 periods was completely silent last week when we did our breathing. Its fun to watch the teachers stare out at their kids resting peacefully in class, something most of them have probably never seen in years of teaching.

One of my favorite things about teaching these kids is the occasional profound insight one of them will share. When they say things like "I felt like all my troubles were gone," or "I have ADD but I was able to be still for that whole meditation," or when I watch a group of kids that 10 minutes earlier were doing everything in their power to look cool and tough, just sinking into a deep and peaceful rest where they have nothing to worry about, I know I have the best job in the world.