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As lifelong yogi Rachel Glowacki notes, “children…have BIG FEELINGS and are still learning to be in their bodies.” In ALL THROUGH THE CROWN, she offers a fun learning tool: an illustrated introduction to the seven-chakra system sung to the tune of “The Wheels on the Bus,” culminating in some explanatory notes and an embodied meditation exercise.

The idea of explaining millennia-old mystical ideas to children may seem daunting, but ALL THROUGH THE CROWN admirably tackles the task. The verse structure of “The Wheels on the Bus” doesn’t leave much room for complexity, so the text picks its core ideas and sticks to them. In terms of the overall pedagogical structure, it’s best to think of the song, the following explanatory notes, and the final meditation as components that flow into one another. The song starts by acknowledging the energy coursing through the body (surely a self-evident truth for young children!), then invokes the parts of the body and the feelings that reside in them. The explanatory notes diagram the chakras and offer brief meditations on their connections. The final meditation is a way to acknowledge, visualize, and release energy. This should bring any practitioner, child or adult alike, through a satisfactory flow of movement and stillness.

The illustrations by Ryan Nelsen serve as excellent counterpoint to the text. Colorful and bold, the imagery captures the sense of energy swirling through the world and the human body. It’s also surprisingly effective at subtly reinforcing the lessons of the text. The chakras, for instance, are often color-coded in study; and, although this is never stated outright in the text, the pages and images about a given chakra are similarly coded—culminating in a helpful diagram of the body with color-mapping of the chakras. The final “Rainbow Meditation” isn’t simply fun and pretty, but a visual expression of their combined energies. There’s a little bit of fudging here (the lower chakras in particular are not discussed in terms of their sacral and pelvic orientations, understandably), but illustrations of the heart chakra with drumming, or respiration around the solar plexus with a crowd of balloons floating above, are clever ways of embodying these subtler ideas about energy.

With a thoughtful structure, smooth flow, and ease of understanding, ALL THROUGH THE CROWN is the perfect tool to introduce young children to their bodies and feelings.

Rachel Glowacki’s ALL THROUGH THE CROWN is a thoughtful and enthusiastic start to understanding the relationship between emotion and the body.

~Dan Accardi for IndieReader