Self-worth, hope, perseverance, love, choice. Seriously, I use this every day in my own life, and I believe wholeheartedly that a large portion of developing a balanced yoga practice is the language we use inside of our minds.

What decisions can we make when we know we are in a bad mood? Where can we go for help? Does quiet help a bad mood, or loud noises and lots of chaos? The meditation time can offer words of positivity when we have negative thoughts and feelings. It’s definitely an opening for a guided meditation. I also see the conversation about how Alicia deals with her bad day and bad feelings as an important one. Nothing works better to diffuse a bad mood like the art of breath. Pranayama instruction and practice fits in as well. Or forward fold with being tired, happy baby with feelings of excitement. An example of pairing an emotion to a yoga pose could be the lion with anger. Tie in a creative mini story with yoga poses paired to certain words for emotions, and BAM, your littles yoga class has a framework. Yoga and words most definitely go together so this little book offers a lovely starting point for a discussion of words and emotions, and la beling our feelings appropriately so that we can communicate with each other effectively. Lugubrious sounds amazing and dark and BIG. It’s my favorite part of the book: the idea of teaching a young mind a big word for a rather normal, universal, every day feeling. The heart of the story is the word ‘ lugubrious’. When you think about using this book to form a class outline for kids’ yoga, I believe the book offers a couple of really good options. I’ve read it to my kids, and my three-year-old especially got real hung up on the name of Alicia’s dog, Neptune. It became a game for us, and a discussion point. Goodreads gives it a 3.46, but friends, it’s absolutely adorable. It’s one of those times in life, where you look up to see if there’s a camera on you. And she had many a bad day when we were growing up. I bought it because my sister’s name is Alicia. I picked up a children’s book before I even had children called Alicia H as a Bad Day by Lisa Jahn-Clough.

Alicia Has a Bad Day by Lisa Clough