Gymnastics, swimming, dance, martial arts, basketball, soccer… There are already many choices available to parents for physical, movement-based extracurricular classes for their children. What makes yoga different? And what are the benefits for yoga for children?
Our children live in a hurry-up world of busy parents, school pressures, incessant lessons, video games, malls, and competitive sports. We usually don’t think of these influences as stressful for our kids, but often they are. The bustling pace of our children’s lives can have a profound effect on their innate joy—and usually not for the better. By practicing yoga poses, children can learn how to exercise, develop confidence, and concentrate better. As yoga becomes more popular in schools through physical education classes and after-school programs, yoga’s rising popularity can be attributed to its basic stretching advantages and improved body awareness, with the added component of a mind-body connection. Yoga is beneficial to children in many ways. Because children encounter emotional, social, and physical challenges or conflicts, a dedicated and intentional yoga practice that includes breathing techniques, behavioral guidelines, and physical postures can be incredibly valuable for them. Yoga is something children can practice anywhere and that the breathing, the concentration, the poses, and the way children learn to act or react to situations, will lead to constant self-discovery and inquisitiveness, yoga builds self-esteem and self-respect. A child’s yoga practice is a rare opportunity to experience play and focus without worrying about being wrong, yoga is an option for children who shy away from physical activity or group activities for fear of failure or being picked last, and it helps athletic children excel in other physical activities and sports, yoga introduces cornerstone values such as non-harming, truthfulness, moderation, cleanliness, gratitude, and self-discipline..
There are hundreds of benefits, but here are the top ten reasons why yoga is awesome for children.
1. Maintains Flexibility and Strengthens Growing Bodies
Children are born with an innate flexibility and yoga poses help to prolong this gift. Poses like Warrior One and Two aids in developing strength in their growing muscles and bodies. Strength and flexibility allow for fewer and less-severe injuries, especially when children are engaged in sports, playground activity, and good ol’ rough and tumbling.
2. Enhances Concentration
In children’s yoga classes, some poses are fast moving while others are slow paced. This allows children to learn self-control, enhancing their focus and awareness. Moving from Flying Bird Pose (Warrior Three) to balancing in Tree Pose takes great attention—a skill that is essential in most learning environments.
3. Increases Self-Esteem
When a child displays great strength, focus, and flexibility in Yoga, it does wonders for their confidence. A successful Crow Pose yields poise and power, which leads them to believe in and pursue their true abilities. Yoga success grants children persistence to achieve greatness as they embark on all of life’s adventures.
4. Teaches Present Moment Awareness
Yoga philosophy teaches present moment awareness because when our mind is thinking about the past or future, we are missing the most valuable now. When children are engaged, focused, having fun, and following a yoga lesson, they are in the present moment. As well, a good quality children’s yoga teacher will redirect kids and teach them about this valuable tool so they can carry it throughout their life.
5. Cultivates a Peaceful, Relaxed State of Body and Mind
All yoga classes conclude with a quiet time, also known as Deep Relaxation. Even if just for three minutes, children learn to understand the importance of this peace and can carry it with them into their daily lives.
6. Gives Tools for Stress Management
Practicing yoga provides kids an immediate outlet to reduce stress in a safe and nurturing environment. It is a physical exercise that produces happy endorphins. While breathing exercises slow down the heart rate, relaxation techniques are powerful sources for calming the mind and the body. Yoga teaches non-judgment and non-competition toward oneself and one another. These are all tools that a child can carry in to any difficult life situation.
7. Sparks Creativity in Ripe Imaginations
Children’s yoga classes often infuse themes that are fun and engaging. When children are allowed the opportunity make up their own yoga poses to fit with the theme and express their experiences throughout the class, it inspires them to be free, creative, and self-expressive. Not only is this playful and fun, but it invites children to tap into their own creativity and use their boundless imaginations without judgment.
8. Encourages Kind Peer and Social Interactions
Yoga teaches children that we are all the same inside, despite our outward appearance, race, and religion. We all have bodies that function, hearts that love, and feelings that feel. Partner yoga poses allow children to fully understand this concept of oneness by working together. Yoga inspires kids to be kind, patient, accepting, and emphatic with themselves and their peers.
9. Enhances Body Awareness
Yoga poses vary from balancing, strengthening, twisting, back bending, and inverting. All of these poses have the ability to teach a child about their body. Yoga teaches children to listen to where in their bodies they feel a movement and express how it makes them feel when they are complete. Body awareness is an invaluable tool for all stages and ages of life.
10. Teaches Discipline and Responsibility
Yoga is not a destination; rather it is a journey of a lifetime, which takes discipline. Ideally, when children learn at a young age the benefit of a committed practice, it ripples out into their everyday life activities, relationships, and responsibilities. When they learn that yoga takes practice versus an immediate accomplishment, they learn and accept that life is a path with good days, bad days, and everything in between.
These are just ten of the many amazing benefits that kids reap from doing yoga. Are your children involved in yoga? What gifts have they been given from this practice? What questions do you have regarding children doing yoga? Yoga is beneficial to children of all ages, but it has been found to be particularly so for kids with special needs. Studies have shown that yoga benefits children with autism and ADHD. NPR has reported that researchers surveyed teachers at a Bronx public school that had a daily yoga program and found that the program reduced children’ aggressive behavior, social withdrawal, and hyperactivity, compared with a control group of children with autism who did not practice yoga. Kristie Patten Koenig, Ph.D., an associate professor of occupational therapy at New York University who led the study, says that yoga was effective because it seemed to play to the strengths of children with autism while also reducing stress. Autism Key, an autism support website, says that yoga helps address children’s’ heightened anxiety, poor motor coordination, and weak self-regulation, something that otherwise is very difficult to do.
Professional organizations that focus on children also support the idea behind yoga. For example, The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and The National Association of the Education for Young Children (NAEYC) recommend that children should participate in activities that support the development of the whole child. This is exactly what yoga is about!
Sources: Parents.com, Yogajournal.com, PBS.org, Positivelypositive.com, Rainbowkidsyoga.net
