Yoga has become quite common for adults in recent years, but have we thought about sharing this practice with our children? Yoga can provide significant benefits for children, perhaps even more so than for adults. Here are just a few of these benefits:
Yoga is not competitive
In today’s world, we hear so much about being the best and achieving the maximum. Yoga teaches children that everyone’s body is different. Different bodies can do different things, and have their characteristics, and this is in the order of things. There is no one better or worse in yoga. We are all just exploring our bodies and learning to manage them in our way. Yoga truly is for everybody.
Children learn mindfulness through yoga
Through poses, children learn more about their bodies and what they are capable of. They learn more about their minds – how they can influence their attitudes towards life, as well as the perceptions of other people.
Through yoga, children learn that they can influence what happens with their thoughts and that they can choose how to react to any situation.
This awareness of their body, mind, and spirit, and what can be achieved when they all work together and collaboratively, helps children develop into more confident, kind, responsible adults.
Namaste: The light in me sees the light in you
Yoga teaches acceptance and tolerance towards others. By practicing yoga, children learn from an early age that all living beings should be protected and respected as they are. This helps create a more peaceful society and a more peaceful world in our future.
Yoga creates healthy habits
Any exercise program started in childhood helps children stay physically active and healthy and becomes part of their later lifestyle. Yoga is more than just a healthy habit. This is a healthy lifestyle habit! Starting from the daily routine and ending with the awareness of your actions. Yoga teaches a healthy approach to food, daily routine, and the ability to understand your emotions – to quickly calm down and focus the mind.
Focus. Focus. Focus
We live in a world of constant distractions. These days, more and more children seem to be unable to concentrate on anything for any length of time. Yoga can help with this. It teaches children to be present in the moment, to concentrate on what they are doing, and to focus on their breathing.
They learn how breathing can help them throughout the day, in any situation. They learn to focus on posture by learning proper body positioning. In doing so, children learn to focus on their body and how it works – guiding each limb or part of their body through specific postural requirements.
Yoga teaches you to relax the body through relaxation of the mind.
Do you know how to relax? So, to not think about anything AT ALL, to COMPLETELY stop feeling your body? Just dissolve and let go of everything, so that nothing holds you? So that nothing affects? For time to stop? This can be learned through yoga exercises. And if you start in childhood, it happens faster and easier. Ask: ‘Why?’ The answer is simple and obvious – to ‘overcome’ stress and so that the body stops hurting. Through yoga exercises, a child learns to better understand his body, and therefore control it. By controlling his body, the child also learns to relax it. The next step in learning is to relax the mind.
To learn how to control our minds, we teach children visualization. This gradually makes it easier for them to manage their thoughts. When they learn to manage their thoughts, they will be able to better control and calm their mind in different situations with external stimuli.
When you know how to calm your mind, you know how to “overcome” stress, and, accordingly, your body hurts less.
Yoga teaches a child methods of understanding himself, and his emotions and managing them
Yoga teaches children to accept and value themselves for who they are. When there is so much inadequate and contradictory information around, yoga teaches children to love themselves. During yoga classes, through influencing the internal glands, balancing hormonal levels, and working with energy centers, children develop a more stable emotional background. They learn to accept events that happen to them more calmly and at the same time they also develop healthy self-confidence. When a child masters this important skill from an early age, it is easier for him to combat the growing feelings of self-doubt that arise during adolescence and beyond.
As children learn proper, healthy breathing techniques and mindfulness techniques, they begin to learn how to apply these tools in their daily lives and learn to understand their emotions and respond appropriately to any situation.
Imagine if these techniques were available to you in YOUR childhood…
Yoga supports positive mental health in children
All the previously listed benefits of yoga in child development are interconnected.
As children learn to accept and love themselves for who they are, see the good in others, center and quiet their minds, and understand and accept their innate abilities, they become more resilient to the ‘outside’.
By practicing yoga from childhood, when a child becomes an adult, he is more likely to have an optimistic outlook in life and will be less likely to experience dissatisfaction, depression, and other mental health problems that are so common today.
Perhaps the most important thing that yoga teaches a child is that relaxation is not only possible but also NEEDED! When a child knows how to relax and be calm, he can better cope with the stress and pressure that comes upon him as he grows up.
Learning to relax your body and mind is not easy, and learning to do so takes time and practice. The innate flexibility of a child’s mind allows him to learn quickly. When a child learns yoga from childhood, he grows inspired by its teachings, becoming less susceptible to the external negative stressful influence of the environment.
It doesn’t matter at all whether your child is studying in a group offline or online, or even using a video course. The main condition for the development of all the above qualities and properties is regular exercise!
In our Yoga Hub club, we offer specially designed video courses for children from 3 to 8 years old.
See how we have fun doing yoga with children at the Yoga Hub club:
Children are natural yogis. Their innate trust in others, combined with a lack of internal inhibitions, allows them to easily and quickly absorb the knowledge of yoga and grow inspired by it. Adults have a lot to learn from how children learn yoga!
If we can get children involved in yoga, not only will they benefit from it as they grow up, but they will also greatly enjoy the process of doing yoga.
Olga (Amitara) – yoga instructor, psychologist
