It’s a wicked time to be a girl.
Alix Dunham means that in a positive sense.
“It’s like the door is open and it’s this generation’s chance to push that door open and go make a friggin’ difference. This is it, you guys, go!” she says.
As the age-old issue of prejudice (sexism) against girls and women was recently highlighted during the U.S. election, women’s marches across the country indicated it’s a unique time for girls to make their voices heard.
And Dunham wants to provide girls with some tools for navigating the next step.
Empowerment is a strong theme in her Girls with Grit program, which aims to build important social-emotional skills for girls, including resilience. The program started with a pilot program in November that was filled in 20 minutes with 30 kids on a waiting list after just one Facebook post about it.
Dunham is a long-time yoga practitioner and former dancer who has been teaching ballet classes in North Vancouver for 17 years. Although the classes are open to both boys and girls, ages two to eight, the majority of the 250 kids she instructs each week are girls.
Through those classes, and through experiences with her own daughter, who is now 20 and also a yoga instructor, Dunham recognized a need to share an important message: be strong, brave, and smart warriors.
“We don’t care about pretty. Pretty doesn’t matter. Pretty is fun but it doesn’t matter,” she adds.
The Girls with Grit program is an extension of that message tailored to an older group of girls, ages eight to 13. The idea was inspired by a mother of one of Dunham’s dance students who asked her to design a program for older kids to continue the theme and provide some tools for “soul resilience.”
Since the fall, Dunham has done three four-week Girls with Grit programs, featuring one-and-a-half-hour sessions each week after school, as well as a number of separate three-hour workshops on weekends.
She describes the program this way: “We’re basically trying to calm our brains down so that we can have real talks about real stuff that goes on when you’re an eight-year-old girl.”
Each class starts with a check-in, followed by a yoga warm-up, a group discussion, mindfulness (what Dunham calls brain train exercises), meditation, breathing exercises, and then crafts.
The craft portion of the class features building a unique Girls with Grit tool kit that includes a variety of items, including a series of cards participants fill out answering questions such as: what are the best things about me?
One of the exercises they do is a two-word breathing mantra: one word in (“peace”) and one word out (“calm”), so they make a bracelet with the letters “p” and “c” on it and put that in their tool kit.
Another tool they create is called a meditation bottle using a water bottle filled with food colouring, clear glue, and glitter. The girls can shake the bottle then watch as the glitter falls to the bottom. The glitter represents “that little hamster wheel of thoughts,”says Dunham, referring busy minds. The kids can then watch the glitter (or the thoughts) slowly fall to the bottom of the bottle as they breathe.
“It calms you down,” notes Dunham.
Also in the tool kit: cards with steps to navigate friendships. Friendship is an important topic for girls at this age, says Dunham, and social media doesn’t help as it provides a filtered view that presents false, perfect images.
“There doesn’t seem to be a lot of truth to girls’ friendships. They all seem to be pretty superficial and I think these girls are going to need some real friendships moving forward. At this age friendships are a really big issue and can really shape how they perceive themselves, how they perceive the world, how they head into adolescence,” explains Dunham.
“Once you can get a grip on that and who you are in the world and a really strong sense of yourself, particularly for girls, I think moving forward that’s going to be such a huge benefit for them not to be ground down.”
Unplugging from phones and social media and discovering quiet time is also an important part of the process.
“One of the true gifts we can give them is say, ‘Just have 10 minutes of quiet time,’” says Dunham. “'Put your phone down and just be you. Just breathe. Have some quiet time.' And I think they’re quite relieved to hear that. I think they need that.”
Dunham is quick to note her classes are not therapy. It is a time to connect, learn some new strategies and have fun.
“It’s a super fun time. It’s basically my favourite thing to do,” she says.
Girls with Grit has a number of programs and workshops at different locations across the North Shore, including upcoming summer camps. Check out the website at girlswithgritvancouver.com.
This story originally appeared in a special section of the North Shore News focused on kids activities.
