S2: E10- Brief Moving Meditations with Kristen Wolf

What a JOY it was to interview Kristen about her Brief Moving Meditations! I hope you LOVE this episode and you enjoy incorporating some of these ideas into your classroom with your students!

Here are the various links mentioned in this episode:
My Guided Breathing Brain Break Resource
Kristen's Qi Gong Teacher on YouTube
The Gorilla/ Immune Boost breath
Kristen's template for the Humming bee breath to use with students!

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Transcript

Annabelle Williamson  

Welcome back to my podcast teaching Vida Loca for season two. I'm Annabelle, your maestra loca, and I am ready to kick off season two with even more enthusiasm, magic, and tips and tricks for your classroom. Get set for a ride of inspiration, unapologetic authenticity, and ideas to spark more joy in your teaching journey. I'm turning up the excitement and elated to have you right here with me. I'm not just your host, I'm your cheerleader, and I am thrilled you're tuning in, buckle up and let's do this. Let's tackle teaching la vida loca together.

Annabelle Williamson  

Hello there and welcome to episode 10 of teaching la vida loca. I am so excited because this episode is going to be especially special, especially specials, is that a thing especially special for those of you who follow me for brain breaks. It is my niche. It is my thing that if people are new to me, they usually found me through a brain break, or a brain break blog, or somebody referred them to me for brain breaks. In this episode, I am joined by a dear friend Kristen Wolf, who is going to teach us about her style of brain breaks. I hope you enjoy and pass it along to somebody who else might need some novelty in their brain breaks. I am now joined by my friend Kristen Wolf, who many of you may know as la loba lista because that's how I was first introduced to her. And I met Kristin many years ago, the first like, in person thing we really got to spend time together was in Cascadia in Portland for forever, and we really hit it off. I love her energy. She has beautiful energy. And I'm very lucky to know her and she'll introduce herself and where she teaches and what she teaches and all of that. Hi, Kristin, thank you so much for doing this with me.

Kristen Wolf 

I love Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. I love your podcast. I love la Familia loca every time. Yeah, well, anytime I get a chance to like, spread the word about what you guys are doing. And I just I do it without hesitation because it's so it's so enriching. It's so meaningful. And the connections you guys are developing is just amazing. It's fabulous. I'm so excited for you guys. 

Annabelle Williamson  

Thank you, my Kristen. And you're in Montana. Yes. 

Kristen Wolf 

Yes. So, I live in Montana. And it's snowed a lot last night. So, kind of crazy.

Annabelle Williamson  

I'm not. I grew up in Colorado, people I think assume like, oh, you must miss the snow. I don't not. Not a piece of me misses the snow. I think it's because it was so much work to like, dig out my car anytime I had to go somewhere or whatever. So, it is literally 82 degrees outside here in New Orleans. Very different. You're bundled up today. And you're teaching, you teach middle school still, right?

Kristen Wolf 

Yes. So currently, I'm teaching middle school and adult classes and in a community based organization, nonprofit called the world language initiative. And I helped start it. And it's fun. And sometimes I'll teach elementary students, but I've also taught high school, I've taught pretty much everything except for the university level. So...

Annabelle Williamson  

That's awesome. And what I want to talk to you today is about these brief moving meditations. Well, I was super excited to see you in ACTFL last year. And I got to sit at your roundtable and learn from you about something that you're presenting for Familia loca this month on which is like how are we meeting the needs of all of our learners in our students with IEPs and Final Fours and in our world language classrooms, but in the middle of that presentation, you did a brain break, because you know, the power of brain breaks and you know how amazing they are. And I think that we should do them in our presentations as well, because everybody needs brain breaks all the time. But you did a what you called a brief moving meditation. And it was unlike any other brain break I've ever experienced. And I immediately was like, I need to learn more about this. I want to incorporate more of these into my classroom. And that's why I'm having you on the podcast today to tell people about what these brief moving meditations are. And if you want to start by just telling us how you learned about them and how you discovered them, how you integrate them into your classroom.

Kristen Wolf 

Yes, so okay, I believe I'm pretty sure I've started doing brain breaks either because of you or because of another colleague but I'm pretty sure it was you and I think the power of brain breaks for me, even when I'm teaching adults, even when I'm teaching high school students, preschool, preschoolers, elementary, middle school, all ages, like you said, can benefit from it. Because we all, when we're sitting for too long, or taking in information for too long, we tend to, our brain kind of gets into this rut. And then, you know, at a certain point, our brain gets like, off, you know, kind of off task maybe, and, you know, we're daydreaming or we're thinking about our grocery list or whatever. And it's normal. And we can always like, reset the learning the optimal learning period, by doing things like this by doing brief moving meditations, or by doing your brain bursts. And so, I, you know, I do this with everybody at all ages, I think it's important, I do it for myself, when I find that I'm losing focus, like, if I'm at a conference, and I've been sitting and listening too long, I will do it just in the back of the room by myself. I am neurodivergent. And so, it's especially powerful for me to be doing these, but I would argue it is for everyone, everyone that I know, that does them with regularity, as a teacher, as a student really, really enjoys it. And it also it's a very organic way to add in language that you wouldn't add in otherwise, like, I would never, I never really like one of the meditations we're gonna do is called I call it gorilla, gorilla. And I don't talk about gorillas that often in my classes, but I can talk about a gorilla, you know, and it's like, and it's fun to, you know, have a meaningful way to connect with ourselves. And in this case, nature, you know, and, and bring those in very organically. So,

Annabelle Williamson  

I think that that's one of my favorite secrets about brain breaks is people often are like, well, I don't have the time to like, do them because I must stay in the target language. And my argument is, oh, first, you're gonna see a boost in engagement, because of during the break, and my brain breaks are in English, 90% of them are in Spanish, and then the other 10% are usually silent. But the 90% are like, very specific vocabulary that, like you said, you wouldn't necessarily integrate or especially like, being a teacher who focuses on acquisition driven instruction, I'm not focused on vocabulary lists of animals or body parts. But if I can teach a brain break that integrates body parts, that's where they're getting that input from, you know, so I think that's powerful. Would you want to, can we do one right now?

Kristen Wolf 

Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so let's do the gorilla one. So you mentioned like, we all are dealing with like, a lot of us are dealing with the this time of year, and especially in the fall, we tend to like you know, fall and winter, we tend to like our lungs take in more than it can than we can handle and we're kind of left with these, like, some people get these like residual, you know, coughs that linger and, and so we're going to do an immune boosting one. But the way I would do it in Spanish is I would say like, we're gonna do the gorilla. And the way, the way I do it is I just ask everybody stand up. And then we, you want to take you want to make like a light fist with your hands. And then you want to kind of pretend like so that's, that's where you're going to end up with the light fist. But you're going to pretend like you're kind of like clawing the air a little bit like almost like a tiger. And you're going to go down as far as it feels safe to you know, put your head down toward the floor towards your knees. As far as it feels safe, you don't have to go super far. You don't need to touch your toes or anything, just as far as you feel safer hamstrings etc. And you're clawing the air as you do that. And then you see your breathing out when you do it. And then you come up with the fists. And you pound on your chest kind of like a gorilla. Now for me, I do it pretty forcefully, because I've been doing this for a while, and I like it. So, I learned this is from Qi Gong and I'll send I'll share a link with you with that where the lady the one of my teachers showed me how to do this. And it's called the immune boost. And what it's doing is connecting your lung points to your lung points on your chest. So right below your collarbone are two lung points that you get rub anytime to connect with your immune system, or if you have time and energy to act like a gorilla, we're going to do this. So, you claw the air as you go down, head down, breathe out twice, and then you come up kind of quickly if you can, and breathe in as you pound your chest with two fists. So, and I like they recommend doing it 39 times, I'm not sure why this is from ancient Chinese medicine. It's nothing religious or, but it's, it's ...

Annabelle Williamson  

My favorite number. My favorite was 39. Yeah, that's great. My Number. Yeah...

Kristen Wolf 

They say you're supposed to 39 times a day, and I am lucky if I get like 12 in a day. But, you know, I find that like, if I have a cough, this helps move out the energy that's like holding it all in, you know, and, and not letting it move. So, we're going to claw the air. And then you breathe in and hit your chest or gently tap your chest, whatever, you don't need to be forceful. You can do it, whatever, you know, whatever speed, I always tell students, if it's uncomfortable for you the way I'm doing it, then find your own way to do it and participate. So, claw the air, breathe out twice, and then pound your chest. And you keep doing that. Let's try to do it like 10 times.

Annabelle Williamson  

And now Kristen, and I literally do this 10 times over on Zoom, and we make awkward breathing noises. So, I'm gonna go ahead and cut that out. But I encourage you to pause the podcast, if you're not driving, and try this yourself. If you're in your classroom listening, take a second, try this. And there's a visual in the show notes for you as well if you want to do it with a YouTube video. I already feel it because when we when we came on before I hit record with Kristen, I was telling her I've had this lingering cough, which my midwives say like is normal for it to linger even longer when you're pregnant. But I can already feel movement of like this mucous build up already. Right. But that was another thing that I was gonna say. When you said lung points earlier, because we're on camera, but people won't see the camera. You were pointing to the inside of our thumbs, right?

Kristen Wolf 

Yep. Yeah. So, I believe this relates to the outside of your thumb. So, the outside of your thumb would be Yeah, so that would be me double check. Yeah, so that's, yeah, that's those your lungs. Yeah. So, your thumbs are your lung points. And that's they go all the way all throughout your body. And if you ever want to rub the tips of your thumbs that also relates to your immune system and your lungs. And so, I often have the students do that we can we'll do something with that in a minute. But yeah, so anytime you're doing anything with your lungs, that that relates, obviously very viscerally to your immune system. And so, I find with my students, I again, I do this with adults with high schoolers, and it moves energy, and it helps calm the room down, helps calm me down. If I find a lot of kids are coughing or have Sniffly sniffily noses, I do this more frequently, you know, like once, once or twice a class, you know, per week, every day, and it tends to keep it's I don't know, I'm this is totally like my, my assumption, but it seems to be like they're healthier as a result, but maybe, maybe I just want to take too much credit for it.

Annabelle Williamson  

I think that that's powerful. That was gonna be one of my questions is outside of like, the obvious break the benefit of brain breaks, and these brief moving meditations, bringing more engagement to our classes, because we are incorporating them. And it really energizes them because that's just what they do naturally. Have you seen more benefits? And that's, I can imagine, not only healthier, but even just educating them about the power of this breathwork or these practices can be for kids. 

Kristen Wolf 

Yeah, yeah, they all like, a lot of them, I found have taken more interest in learning about how their bodies work and Chinese medicine because I talk about it a lot, because I really like it. I found that, you know, the, the transition times go more smoothly, because they're kind of grounded in these moving meditations. I find that they're, it helps to ground me, because you know, like I said before, I'm neurodivergent I have ADHD, and I'm dyslexic, I tend to get excited when the energy in the room gets high and I'm like, having fun with my students and you know, getting whether they're adults or preschoolers. This is true for me. And so, this helps to ground me whenever I feel myself getting overly elevated or over, you know, I just like to bring it down. And it's, it's, it's been powerful. And if it does, I feel like it resets their mind into a better learning space, because they're taking care of themselves first. And then they can like acquire the language, it lowers, it seems to lower the effective filter. It's just, it's like, there's so many benefits. And I just love it. Because again, like, I would never talk about, I rarely talk about lungs in another context, or the immune system, like my systems, my students all know, as Sistema immunological, like the they know that that what that means in Spanish, like they know that I'm talking about the immune system. And yeah, how often do we talk about our immune systems? Unless we're at the feeling sick? You know? So? Yeah, it's powerful.

Annabelle Williamson  

That's really, cool. Do you find that when you implement them? There's a specific time that you do these. Or do you just base it off of the energy of the day you said, like, if you notice, they're feeling sicker? Yeah. 

Kristen Wolf 

So, I think for me, I've in the past, I've maybe I got this idea from you. And sometimes I'll, if I'm feeling really on it, I'll set a timer. I will say, Okay, today I'm getting the feeling they're coming in really elevated, maybe after Halloween, eating tons of candy, I'll set a timer, and I'll be like, okay, every 10 minutes, we're gonna do something like this, like a moving meditation. Or sometimes I'll just read the energy in the room. But I find that the faster I do them, like, so I won't do third, I don't usually do 39 of those gorilla things with them. Because, you know, they don't usually need it, it brings the energy right down. And I make it optional for them to participate. So, some of them don't participate in that. I don't let I don't make them. It's not worth my energy, you know. So. But yeah, I find that they, you know, they're all at varying levels. And some of them are trying to go as hard as I do, you know, like pounding themselves that it feels good to them. And some of them are just like lightly tapping, or they're, you know, just moving through it with me. So yeah, it really depends on the day. And I try to, I mean, I feel like we as teachers are all really good at reading the energy and reading what our students need. And we don't give ourselves enough credit for that. And I think that's actually one of the gifts of teaching is like we become very intuitive in our profession, whether we wanted to or not, you know, whether we planned for it or not. 

Annabelle Williamson  

I think that that's one of the things that as a first- and second-year teacher, you're building that intuition. Because when you first come into a class of 28, kids, can you hear all of it? I can hear like all of those, the gunk gets moving. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, I'm so excited about it, I'm gonna do it 39 times day. But I think you're building that as first, second, third year teachers, you're building that ability to be intuitive about your class and read those energies. But honestly, that's why for the longest time, when people are like, when they're just learning about brain breaks, they're like, when do you do them? That's their biggest question. And my answer is always like, sometimes not at all, if I'm doing something outside and outdoor activity, and we're moving a lot. And then we're wrapping it up together, like in closing, it doesn't, I don't feel the need to incorporate them. But if we're doing something more rigorous and heavier with reading in the classroom, or if I just feel like it's really raining outside and the moods are shifting, and we need to like change the energy, it also varies the kind of brain break that I'm bringing in. If energies are elevated, like you're saying maybe that after, there's one class that comes in after PE and their energies are always, you know, maybe they're frustrated, because they lost or they're excited and hyped because they won. I'm bringing in a breathing brain break, or now that I'm learning from about these brief moving meditations, that's the one I'm bringing in. Whereas other days where it's like the class after lunch, and everything's just kind of slow. And then I'm bringing in one of those higher energy Brain Breaks just to lift the mood and lift the energy. But it's one of those things that you're right. We don't give ourselves enough credit for being able to intuitively read those energies and figure out what our students need. And it just comes with more time I think, too, if you're a brand-new teacher, and you're like, I don't I can't do that yet. It'll come. That's one of the things that you pick up on. Teaching these many, many kids. Teachers another one, we there was a buzzing one we did as well. Will you do that one? Okay.

Kristen Wolf 

So, there's a few of them. But there's one, the one, let's do, it's called hummingbird breath, or humming bee breath, I mean deep breath. And so, you put your index finger on to your eyebrows. So essentially, we're going to close off the five senses. So, keep your ears open, but then you know, we're gonna go into a, like kind of a, it feels really relaxing to me. So put your index finger on your eyebrow, and then your middle finger goes on your eyelids. And you know, you're gonna eventually close your eyes, then you're going to put your ring finger on the sides of your nose, to eventually plug off your nose if you want to. Now you can. And then you put your pinky by your mouth, like on the sides of your mouth. So again, index finger eyebrows, middle finger on top of your eyelids, ring finger on the sides of your nose, and then pinky fingers on the sides of your mouth. And then your thumb is eventually going to go in your ear. But what we're going to do before you do that, we're going to close off the five senses by closing the eyes closing, you know, closing the nose. And then when you look after you plug your ears, you're going to start just going buzz or I'm sorry, wrong. you're just going to hum, I'm thinking, and I always confuse these two. I'll tell you the other one in a minute. So, you're gonna go hum humming. Okay, so plug your ears with your thumbs and start humming.

Annabelle Williamson  

Again, I encourage you to try this, I will not subject you to the awkward breathing and humming that Kristin and I do also because the microphones were trying to decide whether it was like, awkward background noise that cuts in and out. But I do encourage you to try this. It's bizarrely relaxing and centering and grounding. It's extraordinary. Right? So amazing. 

Kristen Wolf 

It's relaxing, right? Yeah. So, it's, that actually is not Qi Gong. That's from yoga, I learned that from my yoga teacher. And she would do that at the beginning of every class. And I was like, I need to do this with my students, because it's just so calming. And so, you know, sometimes I'll just hum three times in a row, or if I if that's all I have time for. And I find that they're just like, grounded afterwards. It's so like, yeah, it really is like you're, you're closing off the five senses you're going inside. And so that connecting with that humming connects you with the vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve for anybody that wants to do another quick one. The vagus nerve is the major nerve that that helps like transmit messages all through the major organs. And it's a really, really important nerve as you can imagine. And the only place it surfaces is behind your left ear. So, I always connect my middle fingers behind my ears, both of them and I kind of like cup my face to kind of like, calm myself. And so, I'm like rubbing at the bass on my year behind my ear, that little divot there, you probably feel it and I just hum and close my eyes. Humm.

Kristen Wolf 

So, if you want like if you want a quicker, kind of like calming grounding thing. That's it that one instead of the humming bee breath, but they both connect to the vagus nerve, they both help to really ground you and send a calming message to all your major organs that I'm okay, we're okay, we can do this kind of thing. So, I really like anything that connects us with our vagus nerve. Also, like belly breathing with your diaphragm, like if you put your palms on your stomach, and you breathe, make your belly really big. And then breathe it out. So, all the three of those moving meditations help us to connect to the vagus nerve, which helps send that like calming, calming energy to your whole body.

Annabelle Williamson  

I don't know if you do this, but this is something that I often if I do a breathing brain break because I have lots of them. But these are in so many ways more powerful because of the hand placement and the intentionality behind it. I love it. But I tell kids like doesn't that feel good? Don't you? Can you feel how your energy has changed? Like having them recognize that and then further mentioning like, next time, you're feeling really anxious about a test, I especially did this with my middle schoolers when I taught middle school was like, next time you're feeling anxious about something, or there's something going on, you don't have to be in Spanish class to do this. Because these, these tools that you're giving them, it's about so much more than them using them inside of our classroom than giving them the gift of, you could just cup your face, put your middle fingers behind your ears? And do three deep breaths and remind yourselves like, I'm okay, and send that message to your nervous system is such a powerful gift to give them, I think.

Kristen Wolf 

It is and it's and it's, and it's cool because it's backed by science, right? Like, all these things are backed by science. And we like, it's, yeah, I tell kids that all the time. I wish I had had these tools when I was in school, because I, I was, I wasn't, I wouldn't call myself an anxious test taker, but I just, I took my time, and I was slow. And then I would get overconfident. And, and I just needed, you know, really some of these tools to just like, help myself slow down. And really like, like, I had a lot of false confidence when I was younger, I think a lot of people that have ADHD, I know do this like kind of as a to balance themselves out because I had, you know, the world was telling me I wasn't good enough. And a lot of ways I thought that was the messages, those were the messages I was receiving. And so, I developed this like really false, high false sense of confidence, that was not beneficial to me. So anyway, I would get into these tests that I would be taking my time because I had extra time, thank goodness. And if I had done some of these things, I could have reassured myself naturally and organically like to come back down and know that I know the material and, and be able to show off better in theory, you know, so I wish I had had these things.

Annabelle Williamson  

Yeah, I think that's powerful. You mentioned, before we wrap up, you mentioned that you don't force students to do this. And I think it's so important. I think sometimes people assume that when I do a brain break, everybody must do it. And this is how it must look like. And I have kids daily who opt out. And that's fine. Like you can opt out when you want to opt out. 

Kristen Wolf 

I love that you brought that back up. Because with my, my Qi Gong teacher, she always says to me that like, Okay, so let's say my, my son has a cough in the house, or a kid in the in the building has a cough. I will like if I noticed they have a cough, I'll do the gorilla thing. And like thinking of them and myself, obviously. But, um, and in in, they've done research on this. I don't know how they've researched this, but they've found that Qi Gong or, you know, brief moving meditations, have, they create this energetic, like, field or, or I don't know how to say it, but I'm not using the proper terminology, I'm sure. But it basically like helps to spread that that energy, that immune boosting energy throughout the school, throughout the room throughout your house, you know, wherever you're doing it, because and it's and so I don't worry about a kid doing it, you know, I, I'm sure you're noticing this when you give them the option to opt out. Because, you know, they tend to like there's residual benefits, like they're gonna they're gonna, if they are not, they're opting out because they don't want to do it. There haven't unit they're feeling grumpy. They're, they're worried it's a religious thing, and their parents are going to be mad at them, because that's not part of their religion, whatever it is, like, it doesn't matter to me. The point is, is that I want them to feel safe. And I know they're going to get those residual benefits. And I know they're going to get that grounding energy from their peers or from me. And yeah, and my teacher, my Qi Gong teacher talks about that all the time. And so yeah, I may not be able to get my own children at home to do Qi Gong with me, but I'm doing it for my household because we've got the flu going through or you know, we've got something moving through our house. So.

Annabelle Williamson  

I think that's powerful and important to remember, especially as teachers who we are continually trying to create community in our classroom. One of the worst things we can do for ourselves is for students to do something they're simply not comfortable with right now. And it could be that maybe they'd get more comfortable later in the year and they want to try it later. And that's great. But they don't have to, I think that's important. Before my final question for you, what advice would you give teachers who are interested in incorporating these brief moving meditations? In just getting started, and if they wanted to learn more, you said you would send me a link maybe so they can see the gorilla one or if there's other resources that you would recommend for us to learn about it.

Kristen Wolf 

Yes. So, I, I think, just know that at first, you're, you might like, mess up. And I'm saying that in quotations because you're not messing up, right? Like, you might feel like you're not doing it right. You might feel that it's like, you know, not going perfectly. But I mean, I guarantee you, if you walked into my classroom any day, you would be like, well, there's like, six kids like drawing while there's a brain break going on. And, and I'm not worried about it. And it might be perceived by someone else who walks in like, little, she doesn't have them on track, you know, like, I'm not worried about it. And so, it's not messing up, right. And then just knowing that, that, just by doing them, like we've kind of we've alluded to this many times, is the fact that like, just by doing them, you're spreading this energy, and this, this feeling of community, this feeling of like, we've got this, we're in this together. And it's so powerful. And I would say I probably do more of these than I do, like, Rock, Paper, Scissors, brain breaks. And I love those too. But this like, I find that nowadays, we all are carrying around a lot of like anxiety and stress. And I find that we just like my intuition is calling toward these moving meditations more and more, because we all need it and myself included, to help ground us and bring us back. So yeah, that would be that would be my advice is just Yeah, don't worry, you're not messing it up and your if just by doing it, you're doing the right thing. 

Annabelle Williamson  

That's awesome. I think that's important and powerful and there's never a bad time to start it. Better to just start and try it. And you know, learn along the way. I love that. I'll include the link that you send me in the show notes for people who are interested in learning more about Qi Gong, but I'm grateful to you. Thank you for joining me today on teaching la vida loca and I'm just so grateful for you and all that you do and the gifts that you're giving your students and in turn my students and now students all around the world in this podcast and try it so the Gracias Kristin

Kristen Wolf 

It's such an honor to be here with you and to call you my friend.

Annabelle Williamson  

I know. We're so lucky that Okay, until next time, we'll be teaching la vida loca and we are sure you will be too.