When Dr. Beth Reese’s then 6-year-old daughter, Jordan, started hurling chairs at her in a busy airport, she knew something was up. Soon after, she learned that her daughter had Sensory Processing Disorder, considered by many to be a spectrum disorder. Realizing that what Beth was learning on her yoga mat could help her daughter “off the mat,” she founded Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® in 2008.
Soon after she met her long-time colleague, Meredith Paterson, who has been part of trainings and curriculum-writing for over a decade. Through trainings and other programs, many other colleagues have joined the family, including Randi Jo Greenberg, Melissa Menke, Mia Connell, Meredith Smith, and others.
In the last 15 years, YYY has created a kids’ yoga and mindfulness training program, including offering the RCYT internationally recognized credential. They also have authored award-winning, bilingual resources including MOSST (Mindful and OHMazing® Strategies for Students and teachers), an on demand mindfulness, movement, SEL, Spanish, neuroscience, and social justice curriculum for teachers, therapists, other professionals, parents, and families. Learn about YYY’s work in schools in this Houston Chronicle article, Houston-area schools adopt mindfulness practices to increase learning.
One of the first practices Beth created for Jordan was Flower Power Breath: breathing in and imagining you are smelling a flower, then breathing out a slow audible ahhhhhh. Jordan found these life-skills, like “Flower Power Breath,” so helpful that she shared them with classmates. Jordan’s teachers became curious and invited Beth to school to share with the whole class, where they experienced fun, mindful games and tools to learn to be calm, focused, and relaxed. Watch a video showing Flower Power breath here.
Beth saw the ripple effect. Clear that there was something meaningful to create, she left her job as an art professor/university galleries director to follow her passion to build a program that would give kids, parents, and teachers OHMazing® tools for life. In 2008 she founded Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® and led her first Teacher Training soon after.
Jordan is now an award-winning filmmaker who graduated cum laude from the School of Theater, Film, and Television at UCLA, and a YYY team member. Learn more about Beth and Jordan’s story on this podcast where she was the guest: Dr. Beth Reese: Flower Power and the Dalai Lama on Exiting the ASAP Lane with Alan Steelman, a former member of the US Congress.)
More about Beth: A teacher with over 25 years of experience with preK-12 grades in art, windsurfing, skiing, and yoga, she is also a researcher and published writer. Having authored numerous chapters in academic texts along with a four-year weekly newspaper column, Beth has a PhD in art museum education and has taught art history, art museum education and museum studies at the University-level. In 2024 Beth will complete a graduate degree in Clinical Mental Health.
