TODAY, OUR GUEST IS MARIA OLIVER, YOGA TEACHER AND AUTHOR OF YOGA AND RELAXATION BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

Illustrations courtesy of Ben and Steph Grandis

2. You are a Flying Insect

You’re lying in a garden on the grass on a warm, lazy day. There are flowers of all colours and sizes around you; every time you breathe in you smell something different. There is buzzing and fluttering all around, and you start to notice insects of different shapes, colours and sizes. They are all friendly insects of the kind you like best.

You decide that you’d like to be an insect. Are you a brightly coloured butterfly, with big, floaty wings? A bee, or a fly with buzzing wings? Or a dragonfly with sparkling wings? Choose an insect that flies and find yourself shrinking, hovering in the air.

The gentle breeze wafts you around and brings fabulous smells straight to you. Your insect eyes now see glowing colours on all the flowers, which guide you to the best smells. Look at the bright colours below you, you can imagine the most fantastical colours on these flowers because you are seeing them through your super insect eyes.

What smells do you smell? They can be any smells you like, not just flower smells. Chocolate cake, toast, strawberry jam… any of the smells that you like are floating towards you.

One flower in particular is so big and inviting that you have to fly over. The smell is the best smell in the world and the petals are all your favourite colours at once. Fly down deep into the flower. Your long insect tongue pokes out and drinks the flower’s nectar, which tastes of your favourite drink.

You feel full and happy, so you decide to rest inside the flower. The sun shines through the petals and fills the flower with glowing coloured light.

You are surrounded by glowing colour and your favourite smell, and you still taste your favourite drink. The petals are like soft sheets and you feel safe and supported. Around you is the buzz of other friendly insects, flying and fluttering between the flowers.

From Blue Penguins, Bells and Open Skies: even more imaginative relaxations for lively kids by Maria Oliver

Maria teaches yoga in Hertfordshire to all ages – her youngest class members haven’t been born yet, and her oldest turned 100 recently! Maria started writing relaxation scripts in 2020 to use in her online yoga classes and videos during lockdown. Yoga teachers love reading relaxation scripts, but copyright laws mean that you can’t record yourself reading a published book, without permission from the publisher. So Maria started improvising and writing down her own.

Maria often uses picture books in her children’s yoga classes, and this relaxation script was improvised after using The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

Illustrations courtesy of Ben and Steph Grandis

A Magic Carpet Ride

Lie down on a yoga mat, or a rug or towel. This is your magic carpet today!

You are lying on a magic carpet. The magic works best if you lie still and breathe slowly. If you breathe too slowly, you may start to feel out of breath, so make sure you feel totally comfortable.

Have a stretch out and lie on your magic carpet. Shut your eyes and put your hands or a soft toy on your tummy. Let your tummy rise and fall as you breathe in and out, and then the magic can begin.

First let yourself feel heavy so that you can feel the carpet holding you up. When you breathe out, you feel so, so heavy. It’s as if you have no strength in your arms and legs, you’re so floppy.

Now feel your magic carpet come up to support you. Imagine it lifting right off the floor, with you lying safely on top. You and your carpet are now just above the ground. Imagine yourself floating a little higher, so that you can float all the way out of your home. Do you go out of a window or door?

Your carpet goes higher now, if you look to the side you can see where you live below you. The buildings are becoming smaller and you recognise the streets near your home. Maybe you’ll float over your local park. Are there are any children in the playground, or is it empty?

You carry on floating upwards towards the clouds. They look so white and fluffy but as you get closer they become more like white mist. Your carpet takes you right into the mist. You are surrounded by mist, it tingles your skin with cold and damp. The air feels cold in your nostrils. Soon you burst through the mist into brilliant sunshine. You have to screw your eyes tight until you are used to the dazzling light. The sun warms your skin and makes you feel even more loose and floppy. The carpet lifts even higher and carries you above the clouds, which look fluffy and solid again although you know they are not.

Soon the carpet starts to sink lower, there are gaps between the fluffy white clouds now, and the ground seems so far below. The carpet carries you lower and you find that it is raining below the clouds. The rain is soft and warm on your face. Sunshine is streaming through the clouds and ahead of you, you can see a glowing rainbow. Your carpet floats towards the rainbow and you realise that you are going to fly straight through. As you fly through the rainbow you see the colours shining on your body: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and darker indigo. See the colours glowing on your body as your carpet follows the curve of the rainbow down towards the ground.

The rainbow seems to end just outside where you live. Your carpet finds a way in, back to where you started, and slowly lowers itself to the floor. Feel the carpet holding you and supporting you, and feel yourself get heavier again.

From Red Kites, Apples and Blood Cells: imaginative relaxations for lively kids

This relaxation script was written during lockdown, when we all got to know our local streets so well, and probably wished we could escape from our homes. Although it still works as a relaxation script today, it came from the desire to float out of the window of the homes where we felt cooped up, and references looking down on the too-familiar streets, seeing empty playgrounds and of course the rainbow at the end refers to the drawings which we saw stuck in people’s windows to support the NHS.

COMING SOON: On Monday 2nd June, our team member and author, Eva Bielby, meets the Flash Fiction challenge with her story, 'The Lake House'.