Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Summer Camp!

Hello All!

We have been very busy working on many new things here at Read and Learn. 

Edie and Leeanne have begun their yoga with the Boys & Girls Club and are loving it!  The children are taking very well to learning with Jeeva and they have decided to split the group in two age groups meeting every other Wednesday evening.  We are so excited to be sharing Jeeva and having a positive impact working with kids in our community that it made us decide to.....

Begin summer camp with JEEVA! We cannot wait to have this great experience this summer, sharing the books that have not yet gone to print.  We will be holding camp in both Newport News and Williamsburg.  The details of the Newport News camp are finalized and listed below or can be seen on our website and we would love to see you.  We will be releasing the Williamsburg information within the next week and can't wait to begin to spread Jeeva into the Williamsburg area. 

 
Lastly, we wanted to share with you that Jeeva the Bully is well under way.  We have seen all of the sketches and will be moving into the shading aspect with the artist.  This is exciting and means that we are well on the way to seeing The Bully in print. 
 
As always we are very happy with all of the amazing things that are going on with Read and Learn.  We are finalizing all of the camp details and cannot wait to meet all of the little yogis this summer.
 
Many Blessings,
 
The Read and Learn Yoga Team
 

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Boys & Girls Club Partnership

It's official, Edie and Leeanne will be working with the Boys and Girls Club in Yorktown, VA to share yoga with their kids!

Part of our belief at Read and Learn Yoga is that good karma goes a long way.  Since we founded Read and Learn we have been working to partner with a local school or organization to spread that good karma and teach Jeeva.  We firmly believe in the benefits that yoga can offer children and we were searching for the right outlet to share it with the masses.  That partner has been found and Edie and Leeanne will begin teaching at the Yorktown location next week.

We hope that by introducing yoga we can better the lives of these kids and share our findings.  We know that yoga offers endless benefits, but we can't wait to see it first hand.

For those of you that would like to help, we are looking for gently used, unwanted yoga mats to donate to the children.  If you have a used yoga mat please drop it off at the Hot Yoga and Massage studio or contact tasha@readandlearnyoga.com.

Your good energy will be greatly appreciated by everyone.

Many Blessings,

The Read and Learn Yoga Team

Read & Learn Yoga Summer Camp

We are so excited we can't keep it a secret any longer, Read and Learn Yoga will be having summer camp for kids this year! We are finalizing the dates and they will be released next week with specific details, but this is what we can share: the camp will be taught by our very own yoga instructors and authors Edie Fischer and Leeanne Robinson in Newport News, VA.  We will be using the yet to be released Jeeva series to teach the children, each day teaching a new lessons to our campers!

The camp will include music, yoga, games, breathing, arts & crafts, team building and snack time.

We hope that if you are local to Newport News that we get the chance to meet your children and share yoga with them!

Monday, January 14, 2013

Celebrate the Wins!


My name is Tasha Rose and I am one of the three partners that make up Read and Learn Yoga.  I was lucky enough to have gotten involved in this wonderful vision shortly after Edie and Leeanne began their journey.  I was so excited by their enthusiasm and love for the work that they were doing, but also by their devotion to bettering the lives of children with the introduction of yoga. It was because of that excitement that I knew I wanted to be a part of this amazing company.  The struggles that children face today are becoming bigger and this seemed to me like a way to make a difference.  

I began practicing yoga about five years ago at Edie's studio and it has changed my life. After learning all of the additional benefits that it has been proven to offer children I couldn't help but want to share that with the world.  Prior to getting involved with these wonderful women I was a stay-at-home mom with a small marketing company that I managed from home.  As a mom, I am always searching for the best for my girls.  To be able to share my love for yoga with my daughters was an exciting thing for me and I couldn't wait to get started.  Well, as any mother knows, your plans and your children's don't always line up just as you think they should.  That being said, I now get to share my story on how Jeeva is bettering my daughters life.

My daughter stopped napping well over a year ago. She didn’t stop because she didn’t need the sleep, but more because her energy level is that that she doesn’t slow down enough to get the sleep that she does need. I got a Jeeva book recently after it was published, when I started working with Edie and Leeanne to spread this wonderful message.  I of course attempted to introduce it to her right away, because it was something that I loved and I hoped something that we could share together.  I also had been involved in studying the research that was available and knew well of all of the great benefits that it could offer her not only as a child, but that she could carry with her throughout her life.  This introduction came with little enthusiasm on her part. This was mainly due to the fact that her attention span, because of her energy level, often is very short. I made the decision that I was not going to force it on her, but would occasionally reintroduce it. She also was not yet four so I thought that she may still be a little young. Last week she came to me asking to do yoga. She has seen me over the course of her life head to what she would refer to as "yoya" class so it is a familiar thing to her.  As I said I had introduced it before and she had even attended the classes that Edie and Leeanne offered, so she was familiar with Jeeva and the book.  As a result, she knew that it involved the story, the practice, and the part that she loves the most, the drawing at the end. Of the five weekdays last week she came to me and asked to do yoga 3. Of those three days, within an hour of the Jeeva lesson she was asleep. I do not know if it was the breathing or the practice itself, or both that allowed her to calm enough to get the sleep that she needs but I could not be more grateful. She loves Jeeva and is becoming better and better at the poses.  Throughout the day she will also stop and show me yoga poses that she is so proud to share, which I can see is a great benefit to her confidence - not that this is something that I fear that she lacks. I am excited and encouraged by her desire to continue to practice, but also so excited to continue to see all of the positive benefits that this will bring to her life. For those of you that have children and face a similar struggle I could not help but share.  Every child is unique in their own right but this is one of the many things that may be of benefit to yours.  Thank you Jeeva.

This is one of Ava's drawings after our Jeeva practice.





As anyone that is newly beginning a company understands it is a long process.  We have worked hard to spread our message and share all of the wonderful benefits that yoga can offer children, but I could not help but share this win.  While this win is small, and part of the Read and Learn family, it is a collection of these wins that we are hoping to achieve.  These are the stories that we are so excited to hear from all of our readers, because we then will know that we are making the difference that we set out to make.  Each of us at Read and Learn share the same goal of making children's lives better.  Please share your stories, because you are all a part of the journey, and it is all about the small wins!

Hope you have a great week.

Many blessings,

Tasha with the Read and Learn Team

Sunday, January 6, 2013

New Year and Great Things

Happy 2013!

It has been a busy close to the year for Read and Learn and we have a lot to thank you for and tell you about.  Since we last wrote we have successfully completed our Kickstarter project.  We cannot say thank you enough to our wonderful supporters and believers and cannot wait for the Bully to be released.  We have submitted it to the publisher and hope to have a complete copy out to our loyal followers by the spring.  As we said we could not have moved forward at the pace that we desire to without the love and support of our backers. 

In addition to Jeeva the Bully we also have plans to release books 3 and 4 by the close of 2013.  Upon the completed release of the first four books we plan to begin the first of our teacher/facilitator trainings to help those who have the same desire of bringing yoga to children to change lives.  Our goal if for Jeeva to be a platform that offers a story line with meaningful lessons that teach children the mindful practice of yoga. 

Jeeva Finds Courage also hit the national stage with a great review in the winter 2012 issue of Yoga International.  We are grateful to Yoga International for recognizing the first of our 13 books and hope that it will help spread the word of our BIG goals for Jeeva and for helping children.

 
We hope this gives a good update of the most recent happenings in and around Read and Learn Yoga and the enormous amount of gratitude that we have for those that have been involved in our wonderful journey.  We believe that 2013 will be a great year for Jeeva and we can't wait to share all of the adventures along the way.

 
 
Many Blessings!
 
The Read and Learn Team
 

Monday, October 1, 2012

The LAUNCH

The date is set and we are so excited to have the opportunity to share the beginning of Read and Learn Yoga with our community! Thursday the 11th of
October we are hosting a launch party to celebrate both the publishing of Jeeva Finds Courage as well as the launch of our kickstarter project to publish Jeeva the Bully and hopefully all 13 if everything goes exactly as we hope!

Yes! You read right, Jeeva the Bully is the next book in the series and it addresses the very real and common issue of bullying. Children are being faced more and more with bullying and Jeeva will go through his own struggle to help teach our readers the "right" thing. All the while being guided through a new yoga practice that builds upon what they were introduced to in Jeeva Finds Courage.

If you are in the Hampton Roads the party is open to ALL and will be held at the Ferguson Enterprises Showroom in Newport News, VA. Please check out Facebook page for all of the details and join us if you can. There will be book signings, a class giveaway, dessert and drinks to celebrate the future of Read and Learn!

www.facebook.com/readandlearnyoga

We have also completed the first month of kids classes at Hot Yoga Massage Studio using Jeeva and we could not be happier with the turn out and feedback. As a result we will continue through the month of October, so we hope to see you at a class soon! The classes are a wonderful mix of children from ages of 3 to 12. We have many that return every week, but also a nice introduction of new comers that make the class fun and wonderful every time.

Make it a great week! Jeeva will!

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

The Journey Has Begun

So our goal is to update you weekly on our journey with Jeeva.  We are so excited about what Jeeva can do to change lives and we are hard at work to get him to the all right places!

We also hosted our very first Jeeva based class on Saturday at Hot Yoga Massage studio in Newport News, Va.  We are excited to report that it was a huge success!  We had 17 children from the ages of 3 to 17 that all were wonderful and loved the experience.  The excitement that they shared with us over what they were learning was more than encouraging.  A wonderful bonding experience that we shared with the children were their drawings of the poses as they were learning.  A VERY important part of this experience is to have the children draw!  You saw right, draw, their depiction of what they are learning is a key component to the overall success of the book, so we encourage you to make this a part of your time with Jeeva. 

We are fast a work on the publishing of book two of our series, and think that it is going to be a wonderful extension addition to the Jeeva that you have already met and the poses you have already been introduced to.  As in book one, you will once again be exposed to a situation that Jeeva is faced with and how he chooses to "do the right thing." 

We hope that Jeeva has become a stronghold in your household and that you feel the benefits that is can offer your children!

The Jeeva Team