Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an electronic copy to read in exchange for an honest review.

This book has everything- yoga, emotional vocabulary, and a gentle rhythm. I really appreciate how the various emotions kids feel are connected to animals and a yoga pose. The pictures are an added bonus!!

I love that there are pictures of REAL kids on these pages. And great advice for little ones during these difficult years.

As a children’s yoga instructor I’m
Always looking for new materials to use in my classes. This book is a great resource for teaching in an accessible and fun way.

Having my granddaughter here each day for virtual school, this book was a great addition to our repertoire. She is only five and gets frustrated, angry, anxious and so on as all kids that age do. It is not always easy to deal with these emotions and using yoga seems to be one trick that helps her. Her teachers use yoga at school, so she was very open to trying the poses in this book to help her. It is a very simple book to read and discuss. Each two page spread has a rhyming paragraph about a feeling and one thing to do to help deal with it. Eg: "Sometimes I feel worried, so I become a bee. I hum and hum and buzz until the worries out of me." The facing page is a mixture of an illustrated background and a photograph of children doing the action or pose. The feelings included are: worry, anxious, jumpy, scattered, frightened, angry, silly, and tired. The yoga poses are easy and all ones that she was able to perform while reading and use when I reminded her. At the back of the book, they show the poses and give a brief description of why and how they help with those feelings. I really loved this book and will be getting a hardcopy to have at the house and use with them frequently. I definitely recommend this one to schools, classrooms and families.

There are many yoga books for children on the market but "When I Feel" is a true standout! I loved the careful consideration put into the visual layout of the book.. Many books on this subject use animals but often the physicality of yoga is lost in translation between furry legs, tails, and manes. By overlaying photographs of human children in the various poses on top of illustrated backgrounds and alongside engaging cartoonish figures, the reader is able to more accurately match their body to the instructions given. I also appreciated the simplistic directives that are easily committed to memory for ongoing practice long after the book has been placed on the shelf.

I recommend this book to anyone with children but also to my therapist/counseling colleagues looking for ways to incorporate mindfulness, body awareness, and grounding into their practice.

A fun collection of yoga poses and breathing techniques, this book is designed to help little bodies deal with big emotions.

When I Feel: Easy Yoga for Big Feelings
by Kathy Beliveau

Rhyming text coupling specific feelings with yoga poses delightfully introduces children to yoga and mindfulness. I find this book to be most beneficial when read as a story and then allowing children to choose a feeling and a pose (or several!). The poses are well illustrated at the end of the book, along with explanations appropriate for children to deepen their practice and understanding.
The body of the book features photographs of diverse children doing each pose against a bright illustrated backdrop. It felt a bit too busy; there are too many visual elements for some children with sensory issues, for whom I have found the book to be especially helpful. The rhyming text flows well and the rhythm makes it simpler to memorize, becoming a tool to deal with feelings even without the physical presence of the book.
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review

I read this book along with my four year old son. It was a quick read and we enjoyed the rhyming and pictures.

I would think this book is more appropriate for younger children (ages 18 months - 3 years). We read this very quickly and he prefers a longer book. I think this book would be great in a preschool classroom.

The book also included information for instructors/teachers/parents about the various yoga positions in the book.

This is not a book that I would go out and purchase to read again and again. Rather, I would try to check it out at the library. I received an advance copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for my review.

Thank you NetGalley for the arc of this book!

ABSOLUTE YES to empowering young children/students to recognize, name, and FEEL their feelings as they come. Social emotional learning has become more of a buzzword in upper grades as well, and I loved seeing that there is another tool available to bring into the classroom. The ARC included key selling points, and one mentioned that the authors had explicitly chosen to “feature children in a range of ages and ethnicities”--and based on the images, SIZES. The authors also intend to focus a lot on promoting this text resource in schools and libraries.

As a high school teacher, and also a certified yoga teacher, I was pleased to see that tree pose was portrayed with the line “When I feel scattered, I stand and lift one knee. Then carefully I balance, pretending I’m a tree.” This grounding focus, while still acknowledging the inner workings of the minds, was validating and honest. Of course, this book is not for everyone, and I might push that this is very much about the mind-body focus side of yoga, and not related to the historical roots/heritage of yoga, and a few poses were described oddly (ex. Cat cow = “scaredy-cat”). That being said, I recognize the book audience is for children, not all yogis. Much respect to the authors, and I would love to have a copy in my school library.

I think this is a great opener to yoga for kids and I love the use of rhyme. I think it’s an engaging way to link feelings to poses and actions. Some of these, especially when vocal noises are suggested, would be difficult/distracting in a classroom, but would be great when the student has a quiet space at school. That’s just something to consider for the school experience when students start to have these emotions, but of course the limitation isn’t generally the same in the child’s home. I think it would be great to be integrated into a break for them an entire class to help them settle down and release energy.

When I Feel was a great visual book for little ones to begin their practice of mindfulness through yoga. Mixing photos of children practicing yoga poses in photography along with illustrations was a brilliant idea as most children love seeing other kids doing really anything!

The story felt a little all over the place with all the pose details in the back of the book. Maybe a focus on each pose while reading the book would be best to identify the pose, do the pose, and a small detail of why it's beneficial or how it's like a certain animal would allow young readers to engage with one pose fully at a time before moving onto the next in hopes of retaining that information for future practice.

Overall, a great beginner mindfulness book for all children! I can see this book being especially beneficial to children who are in need of self regulation of emotions as this would be a very good calming exercise in that instance.

I quite enjoyed this book, which is a bright picture book that shares easy yoga poses for children to manage their feelings. Though the cadence didn't always flow, this book has a very strong visual aspect, which is great to help kids know what the poses look like. I would recommend this for any parent, but especially those who have kids that need to manage their feelings by moving or relaxing their body!

I really like that this book uses photographs mixed with illustrations. I think that when it comes to feelings and yoga that kids like to see other kids in books instead of drawings or paintings. I really like the fact that this book incorporates yoga with everyday activities instead of just focusing on yoga; it focuses on the real world and the feelings we have everyday.

Mixing illustrations and photography, When I Feel is a great beginners guide to yoga and relaxation for children. The book is engaging through pictures and rhyming language and is easy for children to understand.