Welcome to Nancy Siegel Consulting !
Breath by Breath is a comprehensive yoga guide designed for educators and parents of children ages 3-12. This book offers a holistic approach to yoga and mindfulness, providing step-by-step instructions and illustrations for various poses, breathing and mindfulness exercises, techniques, games and activities . Paired with related educational research, Breath by Breath will guide teachers and parents through a journey of promoting physical, mental, and emotional well-being. With its user-friendly format this book empowers you to cultivate in yourself, your students and your children a deeper connection of the body and mind. Through Breath by Breath you will learn how to embrace the transformative power of yoga and mindfulness in order to embark on a path towards greater flexibility, strength, and inner peace as well as learn how to bring more calm into the classroom and home.
With the inspirational jon kabat-zinn
Foreword
I first met Nancy on social media, and from there in person at a workshop. Since that time we've become wonderful colleagues and friends! You are holding in your hands a valuable gift that she has created for the world, and I feel grateful to have known about since early in its inception.
Nancy has brought her decades of personal and professional experience to bear on Breath by Breath, and yet I know also this is only the beginning of what she has to share with the world, and what you and the children in your life will go on to share with others in terms of health, mental health, peace and more.
Chapter by chapter and page by page, Nancy's well earned and well researched wisdom emerges, built on years of direct experience and thorough research. You'll hear not just her kind and authoritative voice, but the voices of many children and adults who've experienced the transformative power of yoga and mindfulness. Some of these may echo your own experience personally and professionally, or jump out as examples that you'd like to share in your work. Breath by Breath draws parallels between so many of the most powerful and important works of neuroscience, developmental psychology and learning of the past century, showing us that mindfulness needn't be anything new, but well integrated into the best practices we've already been doing.
Nancy shares the research on our mind-body connection in a powerful and practical manner. Understanding why these practices work helps the reader share them in turn with even the youngest kids. A skillful embrace and explanation of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) helps educational professionals advocate to bring the lessons of this book into their schools with clear justification and relevance. SEL boosts engagement and emotional intelligence, the main skill our children will need for the future when search engines and calculators can provide instant answers, and even the latest AI tools can analyze and write for us. Likewise, we hear so much about students struggling with "Executive Functions" with a vague sense of what that means and an even vaguer sense of what we can do. Here too Nancy guides us through understanding the challenges, and how we can build executive functions through mindfulness, movement and more. All of this while embracing the diversity of learning styles and intelligences we see in our kids, with practices for every mind and body.
It's my hope that Nancy can inspire you with this book, as much as she has inspired countless kids, teens and adults including myself. I know I walked away from reading this beautiful volume brimming with ideas and inspiration to take to my own children as well as those I work with.
Christopher Willard, PsyD
Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 2023