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Yoga for kids serves as an inspiration guide and encourages the children’s creativity. Yoga is very beneficial to children of all ages, but it has been particularly considered great for kids with special needs.
The poses of yoga for kids often mimic our natural surroundings and may be interpreted in different ways. The breathing exercises are more effective when your kid does yoga.
You can also send your child to yoga classes, which will also make him meet new friends. These classes for kids can even be free in few places.
Yoga is very beneficial to children of all ages, but it has been particularly considered great for kids with special needs. Studies have shown that yoga for kids with autism and ADHD.
Why do Kids Need Yoga?
When your children learn new techniques and ideas for self-health, relaxation, and inner fulfillment, they can also navigate through life’s challenges in very easy ways.
Yoga at an early age will encourage their self-esteem and body awareness with some non-competitive physical activity. Fostering cooperation and compassion—instead of opposition—is a great gift to give our children.
Children vary from different kinds of benefits from yoga. Physically, yoga builds up their flexibility, strength, coordination, and also body awareness. It also, besides, increases their concentration and sense of calmness with improvement in relaxation.
By doing yoga, children will exercise, play, connect more deeply with their inner self, and develop a close relationship with nature that surrounding them. Yoga brings up the extreme inner light that all children have to the surface.
The physical movements1 also involve the kids getting yoga’s true meaning: union, honor for oneself, expression, and part in the unique web of life.
Benefits Of Yoga For Kids
Parents may notice how the benefits of yoga for kids, but the best judges for the practice of yoga are the kids themselves.
Children who have practiced yoga tell their teachers and parents that they can concentrate better during the day, focus on their activities, and pay attention to their tasks– all the finest endorsements.
Yoga is becoming popular due to its basic stretching advantages2 and improving body awareness, with the added component of mind-body connections.
Here are five areas where yoga for kids will benefit them, and each of them will improve their overall well-being.
Builds up Physical Flexibility
Yoga for kids to advance their physical strength because they will learn how to use all of their muscles in new ways.
Gives Clarity in Coordination and Balance
Balance is the most important element of yoga. You created balancing poses to maintain mental and physical poise3, as mental clarity and stability combine from the effort of trying the poses.
Develops Focus and Concentration
The practice of yoga will encourage your children to clear their minds and focus on their effort.
Increases Self-Esteem and Confidence
Yoga will help implant confidence in the kid and bring up learning ideas to children on an experiential level.
Strengthens The Mind-Body Connection
Yoga for kids helps them achieve a sound mind in a good body by calming the mental spirit and exercising the physical body.
Best Yoga Poses for Kids
1. The Downward-Facing Dog Pose
In a downward-facing dog pose, you should be in a standing position and have to bend down and then gently place your palms flat on the ground. Place your feet back to make an upside-down to make V shape with your buttocks high up in the air.
Straighten up your legs, then relax your head and neck, and look down between your legs.
2. The Easy Pose (Sukhasana)
You have to sit comfortably cross-legged in this pose and place your hands’ rest on your knees. Follow the above image. You can use props such as towels, folded blankets, and yoga blocks to feeling comfortable in this pose.
So, try to give your children something on which they can practice yoga.
3. The Downhill Skier Or Mountain Pose (Tadasana)
You have to stand tall in Mountain Pose with your feet hip-width apart and gently bend your knees. Then rest your elbows just slightly above your knees, join both the hands together, keep your spine straight, and then look forward, pretending you are skiing down the mountain.
4. The Dolphin Pose
You can do this pose using your hands and knees; you should bend your elbows by relaxing your forearms on the ground, then placing your palms even, thoroughly raising your knees, pulling up your legs, and looking front.
5. Puppy Pose
Similarly, we have the puppy or diving into pool pose, and you have to come to a sitting position by placing your palms flat behind you and the soles of your feet flat in front of you.
Lift your buttocks to create a table or bridge, and then walk like a crab. It is just like the dolphin, as mentioned earlier, pose.
6. The Dancer’s Pose
You should stand tall just like the mountain pose, stand on one leg, hold out to the opposite leg out behind you, keep the outside of your feet into your hand, then bend your torso forward with the arm out in front to balance and bridge your leg up behind you.
7. The Flower Pose
In a flower or lotus pose, you should sit on your buttocks with a tall spine, and then you have to lift your legs by balancing on your sitting bones, touch the soles of your feet together, and then weave your arms under your legs.
It is an iconic yoga pose known as Padmasana in Sanskrit, and it is the main position for meditation. It is a sitting position that looks easy but requires a lot of strength and flexibility. Lotus or flower position is said to calm the brain, strengthen the spine and ease menstrual discomfort.
8. The Reverse Table Top Pose (Legs Extended)
Place yourself in a position, flattening your palms behind your back and the soles of your feet in front. Lift your waist upwards to pose like a table or bridge, and then walk like a crab.
The reverse tabletop yoga pose will additionally strengthen the wrists, arms, buttocks, legs, and also your back. It opens up the entire front side of your body by refreshing and energizing, which provides relief from fatigue and stress.
9. The Locust Pose
You should Lie down on your tummy by lifting your chest and shoulders and then lookup by clasping your hands back behind you and glide through the water like a shark or fish.
Repeat these steps 3-5 with the left leg by taking 2-3 deep breaths. This yoga pose will massage and tones abdominal organs and improves digestion.
10. The Knees To Chest Pose
In the knees to chest pose, you have to lie on your back by placing your arms flat alongside your body. Then bend your knees and hug both of them close to your chest. Then circle up your legs as if you are riding a bicycle upside-down or running.
11. The Half Shoulder Stand Or Bat Position
In this pose, you should lie on your back with both knees bent, feet should be flat on the floor, arms resting along the side of your body, and chin tightened up. When you exhale, push your palms downward and lift your legs straight up by making an L-shape with your body.
Stay in this position for some time or squeeze your belly and raise your hips. Then, by bending your elbows place your palms on your lower back for a half shoulder stand. Pretend that your feet are the shine flames and your legs are the candlesticks.
12. Seated Twist Or Goat Pose
You have to start by keeping your body in an L-shaped posture towards the wall in a seated twist pose. By Bending downwards towards your right knee, keep your right foot just above the left knee.
Your spine should be straight; if it is not, then that is the wrong position. Your right foot should be kept flat on the ground. Fold up your upper body to the right side. Then slowly take your left elbow to your right knee and your right hand back just behind you.
Things to Consider, While Doing Yoga with Children:
- Be free to change the yoga poses to suit your needs.
- Focus on how you and your kid enjoy the movements, and it is not compulsory to practice perfectly aligned poses.
- Engage the children by following their passions and interests.
- Create real and meaningful experiences.
- Increase their energy level by showing them different learning styles.
- Be creative, but please be safe.
- Wear very comfortable clothing and practice barefoot for better body involvement.
- Play yoga games with your children to engage them in how to practice yoga poses.
Yoga For Kids
Yoga for kids helps them address heightened anxiety4, poor motor coordination5, and weak self-regulation, which is otherwise very difficult for some kids.
As yoga for kids has become more popular in schools through physical education classes and after-school programs; but mostly comes up with disagreement.
Many of the adults love the benefits of yoga, but few parents think that the practice of yoga might have a religious association and, like prayer, shouldn’t be allowed in a public space.
Click here to read more articles like this and go and practice yoga along with your kids.
- Harper, Jennifer Cohen. Little flower yoga for kids: A yoga and mindfulness program to help your child improve attention and emotional balance. New Harbinger Publications, 2013. ↩︎
- Rahul, M. “Benefits of Yoga Physical Education and Sports.” ↩︎
- Telles, Shirley, et al. “Effect of yoga or physical exercise on physical, cognitive and emotional measures in children: a randomized controlled trial.” Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health 7 (2013): 1-16. ↩︎
- Segool, Natasha K., et al. “HEIGHTENED TEST ANXIETY AMONG YOUNG CHILDREN: ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ANXIOUS RESPONSES TO HIGH‐STAKES TESTING.” Psychology in the Schools 50.5 (2013): 489-499. ↩︎
- Schmidt, Richard C., et al. “Understanding social motor coordination.” Human movement science 30.5 (2011): 834-845. ↩︎
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