About Us

Our Mission

The Right to Equal Opportunities.The Right to a Stable, Loving and Nurturing Environment. The Right to Guidance from a Caring Adult.

Yogaworthit is dedicated to providing children,  young people and their adults or carers with practical tools  to manage one’s physical, mental and emotional health in an independent and pro-active way.

As such Yogaworthit’s Moto is: 
Let’s invest in our children because they are worth it! 
They are the future, our future, their future!

Committed to make a difference in people’s life.

Committed to deliver well-resourced, differentiated, high quality teaching to children and young people.

Committed to enabling children and young people to achieve their full potential and build their growth mindset.

Dedicated to promoting engagement, active participation with leading opportunity as well as active listening.

Dedicated to providing a safe and nurturing place to voice ideas and see spontaneous initiatives come to life through complete immersion.

Dedicated to sparking interest and thirst for learning and exploring in a space where creation, appreciation and awareness of imagination and innovation is at the core of everything that is done to reflect the world from a child and young person’s point of view.

Meet Elodie Ancel

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My name is Elodie Ancel.

I have been working with children and young people for over 27 years now in France, Germany and the UK in various settings ranging from schools, summer camps, museums, theatres, royal palaces, libraries, housing associations, charities, festivals, GP surgery and dentist. (If you want to find out more about the projects I work on go to my LinkedIn page.)

I have done some outreach work, created immersive environments for children and their families, taught French, delivered arts and craft workshops, performed, lead speech and language booster group, taught and assisted in year 1 and 2.

All these experiences have been invaluable leading me inevitably towards Yoga and Mindfulness, which now trickle in everything I do and deliver.

I have just completed my 95-hour Yogabeez Children’s Yoga Teacher Training Programme, MISP.begincourse last April 2019 and will be completing my 300-hour Adult Yoga Teacher training programme in a French-based Ashram this August. I am also planning to continue my training with MISP to explore teaching children and young people mindfulness more in depth.

I am currently teaching in a South-East London primary school Yoga and Mindfulness to year 1 and 2 classes on a weekly basis and punctually across the school in Early Years, KS1 and KS2.

In addition, 

  • I am running a Free weekly Saturday class in Croydon in partnership with Essence of Good Health Free Yoga for children aged 3-13 and their parent or carer in Croydon to give undiscriminating access to all in the borough to a discipline, which aims at giving participants tools to take home to look after one’s personal physical, mental and emotional needs
  • I have worked with the National Autistic Society who links their families whose children are in the mainstream schools with local services in Croydon borough
  • I have worked with South Croydon Scouts, Beavers and Cubs
  • I launched a few partnership projects to interlink yoga and mindfulness with other artforms
    • Gwoga: a hybrid of Yoga and Gwoka-a dance and music artform from the French Caribbean island Guadeloupe-delivered in partnership with a live musician Christian-Joseph Maturin
    • Capoyoga: a hybrid between Yoga and Capoeira-a non-contact martial art from Brazil- delivered in partnership with Karina Khokhar.
    • Mindfulness Slime Lab: a hands-on workshop linking with science and design & technology where children and young people get to make and take home a tool to calm down and clear their mind so as to get back to a peaceful state of mind. Lead in partnership with young people to promote youth creativity and entrepreneurship and leadership skills.
    • Storyoga: bringing movement to stories and creativity to create, modulate stories linking to literacy curriculum with children author Lucy Rowland.
  • Coming up:
    • Eskistayoga:a hybrid between Yoga and  Skista- dance from Ethiopia- with  dancer and live singer Zewditou Yohannes
    • Shiatsuyoga: a hybrid between Yoga and Shiatsu-a well-being Japanese body-work based on Chinese medicine- with Norma Gaston

Children and teens are so responsive that I am totally dedicated, committed and inspired to continue delivering more classes to give a platform for children, young people and their adults to express themselves freely in a safe  and nurturing environment, gain confidence self-esteem, respect in themselves and therefore respect of others making our world a better place.

How We Work

Check-In space for children choose their affirmation as they enter the space

TOOLS TO DIFFERENTIATION OF NEEDS AND INCLUSIVE PARTICIPATION

Yogaworthit is committed to full inclusion of needs whether physical, mental or emotional. To do so, lessons are planned to be entirely immersive and incorporate aspects of structured and unstructured along with some individual and team TIME thus offering partakers sensorial choice and options while supporting them with a reassuring repetitive routine of the sequence of activities for each class.

Instructions throughout the class are short, clearly enunciated and provided in a variety of formats to offer an access point to everyone in the room: 

  • words delivered orally and/or in writing
  • sounds
  • visual flashcards written using CommunicateInPrint Software or pictures
  • sensory tools

Settling in the children is the first thing that is done at the beginning of each session to lay out the expectations: the rules and the 6-step timetable are reminded, the focus on the skills and attitudes for the lessons are announced. 

The zones of regulations are at the chore of everything we do and so we refer to it constantly so as to bring awareness tohow they feel right now and highlight how they can use the tools they are exploring through the session to self-regulate.

These tools can help them to get them back to the green zone: the zone where one is calm, peaceful, content, happy and focused/ready to learn.

The space is used in its integrity to embrace people’s need and allow differentiation. 

  • Mats are laid out to reflect the theme of the day i.e. a circle for the earth or the shape of China for Chinese New Year, etc. Mats are also used as props to experience certain body aspects such as using the mat on top of one’s body when on all four to feel the 10cm of fat outer-layer for the polar bear whenwe celebrated International Polar Bear Day, or wrapped around our body to become the bumper of bumper-cars when we celebrated Eid Al Fitr and went to the funfair.
  • The rules and expectations for the sessions, the visual timetable, the skills and attitudes required for the day and the zones of regulation are placed at eye level in the centre of the space to be referred to throughout the session. 
  • A calming down corner away from the chore of the group but close enough to still be part of what is going one is laid out and incorporates timers, a sensory pack, a zones of regulation visual and a rules’ visual.
  • Pictures and words are laid on the wall or floors to link in yoga to the curriculum with the theme of the day, stimulate children’s creativity, bring a sense of curiosity and enthusiasm.
  • The space is used in its entirety and lessons incorporates both time on one’s mat and time travelling in the entirety of the space exploring adding movements to poses.

To acknowledge participants emotions or moods and teach them to become self-aware as well as boost their confidence, self-esteem and therefore love of who they are and appreciation of others, partakers are ask to think and choose an affirmation that is the for them now or they want to be true by the end of the session. There is also a check in activity which starts the session where individuals are asked to take a minute to ground and introspect themselves to find out how they are feeling right now and embody the feeling in a freeze pose to show others but also learn how to decrypt that feeling on someone else’s body. 

Each session follows a set structure laid out on a 6-step visual timetable. This timetable comes in an A4 format stuck on the wall as well as velcroed format which stays by my mat. I then take out each activity away once we have completed it to give participants a visual reference of where we are, what we have done so far and what is left to do.

The 6-steps include:

1-Check-in

2-Breathing

3-Warm-up

4-Poses

5-Relaxation

6-Good byes

The structure of the class follows that of a PE session with a warm-up, main chore and cool-down. However, it has 2 bonuses, which include the breathing and relaxation to tune in in our body and self-care as well as increase breathing capacity useful for activities such as running and swimming, copying with stress during challenging situations in times of competitions and looking after oneself through meditation and relaxation by helping our body recover.