Stars In Motion

01/13/2026

Registration for Toddler Time and Move and Groove at The Gale Center with Hernando Parks closes Friday! Be sure your friends get signed up!

01/13/2026

There’s something about a new year that makes us want to reach a little farther—physically, emotionally, creatively. If aerial arts has ever sparked your curiosity but you’ve never quite taken the leap, this is your moment.

Aerial work isn’t just for performers or daredevils. It’s for real people who want to feel strong, capable, and a little more alive in their bodies. Maybe you’ve watched silks on stage, floated in an aerial yoga class, or simply felt that nudge to try something different. You don’t need a dance background or circus experience. Just bring your curiosity and a willingness to play.

At Stars In Motion, we offer a variety of aerial arts classes several times each week. We also offer each of these classes in a private group format. You only need six friends to create a private group session!

Our weekly schedule includes:
💫 Aerial Yoga Mondays 7:15pm
💫 Aerial Silks Class Tuesdays 6:15pm
💫 Aerial Hammock Wednesdays 6:30pm
💫 Aerial Lyra Wednesdays 7:30pm

These classes are open to all levels, including first timers! Our staff has lots of practice in teaching multi-level classes. Being a beginner is never a burden. Regulars understand and remember what it’s like to start from scratch. You’ll have tons of encouragement 🤗

Start this week - don’t wait until ….
you’re stronger or more flexible or powerful …. all that will happen organically in these classes!

book online in advance at www.starsinmotion.com or use MindBodyonline

01/13/2026

Rest and stillness are important at every age. I talk to people all the time who don’t do yoga because it’s “slow”.

That may be because slower is harder. Or because when we slow down, and then become still, we can hear our thoughts, and feel our feelings. And that can be hard.

We require the stillness and rest. If you are in the “yoga is too slow” group, I invite and encourage you to start with Yoga Express.

Our Yoga Express 45 minute class will provide simple skills for staying mindful as well as breathing techniques for grounding. Exciting flows, built from warm up to work phase, will encourage engagement. Our meditation is guided and brief to minimize the need for fidgeting. We will learn to become calm and relaxed. We will practice stillness in short form.

Join us for Yoga Express each Tuesday at 4:30-5:15.
book online in advance at www.starsinmotion.com or use MindBodyonline

When We Taught Children How to Rest — And Then Forgot Why It Mattered

In the 1950s, there was a moment in every kindergarten day so predictable you could set your watch by it.

After the singing.
After the crayons worn down to stubs.
After circle time and sticky fingers from graham crackers and small cardboard milk boxes—

The lights would dim.

A record would settle onto a turntable.
The needle would crackle, then find its groove.
Something soft would fill the room. Something slow. Something kind.

And twenty little bodies would stretch out on striped mats or faded rugs. Shoes tucked under cots. Blankets—frayed, thumb-worn, familiar—pulled up to chins. A room full of children learning, together, how to exhale.

Naptime.

For millions of children growing up in the 1950s, ’60s, and early ’70s, this ritual was as essential to kindergarten as finger paint and the alphabet. It wasn’t filler. It wasn’t babysitting.

It was the lesson.

Stillness Was Once Part of the Curriculum

Educators believed something we’ve slowly forgotten:
young children need quiet.

Not just sleep—but stillness.
A pause where feelings could settle.
A space where overstimulated minds could wander safely.
A reset before the afternoon rush of blocks, numbers, and playground dust.

The science agreed. Children’s brains and nervous systems were still under construction. Rest wasn’t a reward. It wasn’t optional.

It was developmental maintenance.

Teachers became guardians of calm. Soft voices. Slow footsteps between rows of breathing bodies. A whispered story read to no one and everyone. A hand smoothing a blanket. A steady presence in low light.

A lighthouse.

The Quiet That Shaped Us

Some children slept—deep, open-mouthed sleep—exhausted by morning play and the overwhelming newness of school.

Others didn’t.

They stared at the ceiling.
Counted tiles.
Watched dust motes dance in a thin blade of sunlight slipping through the curtains.

They drifted into that rare kind of daydreaming that only happens when you’re five—when time is wide and nobody is rushing you to become something yet.

Even the kids who hated naptime learned something important.

That sometimes you have to be still, even when you don’t want to be.
That rest is not the opposite of learning.
It’s part of the work.

For many children, it was the only stillness in an otherwise loud, busy day. A quiet bridge between lunchboxes and hopscotch. Between learning letters and learning how to share.

Then We Decided to Hurry

By the 1970s and ’80s, something shifted.

Kindergarten stopped being about socialization and curiosity and started being about readiness.
Pre-reading. Early math. Staying on track. Getting ahead.

Schedules tightened. Testing crept younger. Parents worried about falling behind before childhood had even properly begun.

Naptime began to feel inefficient.
Unproductive.
A luxury we could no longer afford.

So the mats were rolled up.
The record players disappeared.
Overhead projectors replaced them. Then computers. Then tablets.

By the 1990s, naptime was mostly gone from public kindergarten classrooms—surviving only in preschools and full-day programs for very young children.

A Day With No Pause

Today’s kindergarteners move from reading groups to math centers to screens to lunch to more instruction. Recess—if they get it—is brief. Quiet is rare.

There is no dimming of lights.
No permission to close your eyes.
No collective exhale.

And we act surprised when childhood anxiety soars.

What We Remember — And What We Lost

Those who lived it still remember:

The rows of striped mats.
The scratch of a needle finding vinyl.
The smell of that one blanket that probably only got washed twice a year.
The relief of being told it was okay—expected, even—to stop trying so hard.

Naptime wasn’t just about sleep.

It taught us that rest has value.
That quiet has purpose.
That you don’t need to be productive every minute to be worthy.

It was a lesson we didn’t realize we were learning—until we grew up in a world that never stops and makes us feel guilty for needing to pause.

Maybe That’s the Lesson Worth Remembering

To parents: your kids likely don’t have this anymore—and they’re expected to perform at full speed all day long.

To teachers fighting to protect play and rest: you’re not being soft. You’re honoring what science has always known.

To anyone who feels ashamed for needing rest: we used to teach five-year-olds that stopping was part of learning.

And to those who say childhood is “too easy” now—today’s kindergarteners have more structured academic time than third-graders did in the 1950s.

We didn’t make childhood harder because it was necessary.

We made it harder because we forgot how to slow down.

We once dimmed the lights, put on a record, and gave twenty small people permission to just… be.

Maybe it’s time we remembered how.

01/12/2026

"You were once wild here.
Don't let them tame you."

— E.M. Forster, “A Room with a View”

I’ve pondered this quote for several days, researched what the author meant and how it relates to the characters, his intention for the reader, and how it we might connect to this quote today.

It makes me remember the freedom of childhood. Particularly the freedom of a Saturday morning. A bowl of cereal parked in front of cartoons. Being outside creating imaginary spaces and foods and making up games. Trying stunts that were never possible.

“You were once wild here”
I think this means free to be who we were created to be, in the places and spaces we choose to go, the path our heart desires to travel. To be curious, and expressive, and to feel alive with purpose, in the here and now. Here in a place, relationship, phase of life, or in our own body.

“Don’t let them tame you”
This phrase warns us against external pressures like fear, shame, routine, authority, and even well meaning people. These factors work to domesticate or tone down our instincts, stall our creativity, or diminish our truth. Conformity asks us to extinguish our spark in order to fit in.

When someone mocks our choices and decisions about the way we eat, move, play, worship, earn, they’re demonstrating their lack of freedom. They’re asking, or sometimes demanding, that we conform to norms and molds society has created. Those walls they themselves have given in to.

We can live deeply true to our self, who we are outside of and before other people’s opinions, expectations, and societal rules narrowed our vision of who we really are. Once we understand who we want to be, we can create healthy patterns and routines, establish boundaries that serve us well, and commit to become our authentic, passionate, instinctive self.

We may have experienced outside constraint, repression, or social taming. As long as we are living, it’s never too late to claim, or reclaim, our given nature.

At its heart, the quote is about:
Autonomy, staying connected to your inner compass
Authenticity, resisting the urge to shrink or soften what makes you you
Remembrance, reclaiming parts of yourself you may have abandoned

Living out loud and true to our original spirit doesn’t need to actually be or even feel loud. This is simply a call to allow our voice to rise up and out. Whether that is spoken or just lived is up to us.

We can live boldly and unconventionally once we recognize the difference between who we are and who we are told to be.

Stars In Motion is a place where you can find yourself again.

01/10/2026

We’ve got some great opportunities for children this month! Check out these wonderful programs and share with friends 💜💫
{Edited to add a 2nd preschool section!}

⭐️ Mighty Movers 1: 6 week dance class session for ages 3 - 5 begins Jan 21 3:30-4:15 (the 4:30 class has filled)

⭐️ Mighty Movers 2: 6 week dance class session for students in K5 - 2nd grade begins Jan 22

⭐️ Toddler Time for crawling babies - age 2 at The Gale Center with Hernando Parks
Tuesdays at 9am begins Jan 20

⭐️ Move and Groove for ages 2-5 at The Gale Center with Hernando Parks Tuesdays at 10am begins Jan 20

⭐️ KidFit Club Aerial Arts mini camp Jan 19, 9am-2pm for ages 5-13

** See the comments for sign up links **

01/09/2026

KidFit Club, the Aerial Arts Mini Camp at Stars In Motion, is the very best way to spend a day off from school! Our next KidFit Club is Monday, January 19.

Register your child here: https://clients.mindbodyonline.com/classic/ws?studioid=297109&stype=-7&sTG=27&sVT=19&sView=day&sLoc=0

01/08/2026

Here are the last few pics of our Fall 2025 Dance Class: Nutcracker Ballet Session
Dress rehearsal and performance day!
** borrowed some of these 🤗

Our next Mighty Movers 6 week session begins Jan 21 for age 3-5 (one spot left) and Jan 22 for grades K5-2nd (several spots open)

Register your child here: https://clients.mindbodyonline.com/classic/ws?studioid=297109&stype=-102&sVT=76&sView=day&sLoc=0

01/08/2026

Thursdays are back!!!

The holidays were fine, but boy have we all missed Thursdays! HIIT Pilates at 5:30 for a full body resistance workout followed by Yin Yoga at 6:30 for deep stretch. Today’s focus is shoulders.

These classes are best taken together, like chocolate and peanut butter.

book online in advance at www.starsinmotion.com or use MindBodyonline