Randi Jo Greenberg, a Park City-based certified yoga and mindfulness meditation teacher and practitioner, sees the importance of mindfulness in school.
“There is so much happening in these kids’ lives, and things are faster than they used to be,” she said. “I think their schedules have been compounded and less free flow and feel they need that practice of emotion regulation and grounding.”
For the past 15 years, Greenberg has helped students in and around Park City find that mindfulness through yoga classes, and she will continue that practice this year at the Park City School District elementary schools, starting Sept. 14, and the Weilenmann School of Discovery, starting Sept. 15. (See accompanying schedule.)
Parents can sign their kids up for the whole year, which includes a discount, or they can sign their kids up session by session through Greenberg’s website, yogawithrandijo.com.
“I’ve been doing both the district and Weilenmann for many years,” she said. “I was one of the founding parents at Weilenmann. My daughter, Chloe, was a student there. So that first year they opened 15 years ago.”
When Chloe began attending Trailside Elementary School the next year, Greenberg began teaching there while maintaining sessions at Weilenmann.
“When I started these classes, they were primarily yoga programs,” she said. “It was more about getting the kids to move their bodies and have fun in yoga poses and the physicality of these poses. At 5 or 6, the kids aren’t trying to do perfect poses, so it was about connecting to their bodies.”
Heather Poplawski has been teaching Greenberg’s Weilenmann sessions for several years.
“Heather is amazing,” Greenberg said. “I taught her, and she’s done official trainings with me.”
Greenberg writes the curriculum, and she and Poplawski get together to make sure they’re on the same page.
“Then Heather takes the class curriculum to Weilenmann and puts her own spin on things,” Greenberg said. “Since she has done a lot of other things for Weilenmann and her kids went through that school, she’s very integrated in their programming.”
Throughout the past 15 years, Greenberg’s own yoga practice has changed.
“I’ve become more focused on meditation and mindfulness, so I started to bring that into the kids’ classes as well,” she said. “We do journaling. We do a lot of work with breath, a lot of work with our senses and present-moment awareness.”
The sessions are also based on a mindfulness theme, according to Greenberg.
“We will take inspiration from a book series or something like that,” she said.
Greenberg’s offers after-school classes to students in grades pre-Kindergarten through fifth.
“The kids who really are attracted to the classes are in grades pre-K through third, and the older kids, a lot of times, are there to assist or help,” she said.
Greenberg awards kids who finish a program that lasts throughout the school year a colored key.
“In karate, every time you level up you get a different color belt, but with our program I have keys,” she said. “So the first time the students finish a series with me, they get a red key with a key chain. The next time they come and finish, they get an orange key. And then they’ll get yellow, green, blue and purple.”
The final key is black, Greenberg said.
“When they get that, they also get a certificate of completion, a kids yoga T-shirt and become my assistants,” she said. “I then ask them to come to my summer camps and kind of hire them to help with the camps.”
Greenberg loves how the students develop their commitments as they receive the different keys.
“When the kids get their blue keys, they kind of know more about how things are working, and I see them getting more confident when the black keys come,” she said.
Greenberg discovered yoga in the mid 1990s.
“When I started yoga, it was at a time of my life when I was going through some difficult physical and mental stuff,” she said. “I fell in love with yoga and the place I practiced at was in Florida.”
The yoga instructor suggested teacher training to Greenberg.
“So I did a month-long training session at Omega institute in upstate New York, with a group called Nosara Yoga,” she said. “I came back and didn’t know if I was going to teach, but I knew so much more and felt like I could explore more.”
A few days after Greenberg returned to Florida, her teacher asked for a favor.
“He said, ‘I’m going on vacation. Will you sub for me?’” she said with a laugh. “So I started teaching.”
When Greenberg relocated to Park City 21 years ago, she was pregnant with Chloe.
“I was interested in pre-natal yoga, so I did that,” she said. “A my daughter was born, we did pre- and post-natal yoga — mommy-and-me and stuff like that. And when she got into pre-school, I started doing that at Creekside Kids. So, as Chloe grew, my teaching changed.”
Now, Greenberg, who cofounded Mindful. Summit County, a nonprofit that helps the community access mindfulness practices, with Rebecca Brenner, teaches everywhere.
“I’m at Summit Community Gardens and the libraries,” she said. “And I’m also at Basin Recreation and the Senior Center. I love meeting the community and sharing what’s most important to me and what I think can help people. It’s important for all of us to take time to take some breaths, pause and be aware. And you can start at any age.”
Randi Jo’s Kids Yoga & Mindfulness
All sessions run from 3:15-4:15 p.m.
- Monday — Parley’s Park Elementary School, 4600 Silver Springs Drive
- Tuesday — McPolin Elementary School, 2270 Kearns Blvd.
- Tuesday — Weilenmann School of Discovery, 4199 Kilby Rd.
- Wednesday — Trailsides Elementary School, 5700 Trailside Drive
- Thursday — Jeremy Ranch Elementary School, 3050 Rasmussen Rd.
Family sessions
- One Sunday a month — Sept. 13, Oct. 11 and Nov. 18, 10-11 a.m. at Basic Recreation, 1388 Center Drive.
Adult sessions
- Sundays — Mindful Gentle Yoga, 2:45 p.m. and 4 p.m., Sundays at Basin Recreation
- Every third Tuesday of the month — Mindful Meditation, 11-11:45 a.m., at the Park City Senior Center, 1361 Woodside Ave.
Adult retreat
- Harmony Within with Lindsey Marshall — Nov. 5-8 at Capitol Reef National Park’s Red Sands Hotel
For information, call 310-403-4645 or visit Yogawithrandijo.com