At what age should children start doing yoga? What types of yoga practice should they start with? What are the benefits of yoga for kids? Today we are going to answer these frequently asked questions and discuss each of these in detail.

Yoga can play a crucial role in connecting you with your child while having some fun. Practicing partner poses is a great way to start your yoga journey with your kids. It helps to keep the child engaged and facilitate communication between you.

Why kids need yoga?

There can be many other ways to get engaged with your child, such as cycling, running, skipping, swimming, playing some sport, etc. but why we should choose yoga?

Connecting with your children in any form builds up your bond with them. You can choose from a variety of options available but yoga offers a unique possibility for every child to unlock their natural potential. Yoga proposes a sense of oneness with life.

The hurry-up world

Your children live in a hurry-up world of the incessant lesson plans, school pressures, competitive sports activities, and yes, the busy parents. You generally don’t consider that these things can impact them but they get stressed at times. Yoga can help counter this day to day pressure and promotes relaxation. Yoga at an early age encourages self-confidence and self-clarity among children.

Benefits of yoga for kids

Children can derive enormous health benefits from this uncompetitive exercise YOGA.

• Increases Flexibility
• Enhance Mind-body coordination
• Body awareness
• Improves concentration
• Develop an unvoiced relationship with the natural world that surrounds them
• Brings Calmness and relaxation
• Improves immunity

When children initiate the yoga practices in real life they get a chance to learn and experience the things with the poses, for eg. when they are performing a lion pose (simhasana), it is obvious for them to feel like a lion or at least think about it during the pose. When they assume a pose of this kind they not only experience themselves into the behavior of a lion but also develop confidence, a sense of power in them just like a lion!

Learn to teach in the way they learn

Children have their own sense of learning good and bad. Yoga for children is entirely different from yoga for adults. Teaching yoga to children can be an interdisciplinary approach to learning. They may need some springboards, animal adaptations and behavior, music and playing instruments, drawings, storytelling, etc as every child has a unique learning pattern. A child may possess any one of the following learning patterns:

Children should be encouraged to learn Yoga on the basis of his/ her learning kind.

Rules of teaching Yoga to Kids

The fundamental rule of teaching yoga to children is – no rule.

If you are a yoga teacher and planning to teach yoga to the children, there are few tips to keep in mind to enhance the experience.

Avoid Long sessions

Unlike adults, kids do not possess a quality of focusing for long hours. The greatest challenge is that they might lose interest in the first half of the session. You can do multiple things to hold the attention for long such as teaching them the benefits of flexibility, focus, health, etc. and keep them engaged during the session.

Sound is a great way to add fun

As you start teaching a pose resembling the name of any animal, a lion or a dog say, most likely children will jump at a chance of behaving like the same. You can include some sounds of those animals during the poses to keep them engaged with the pose, or you can also recite ABC or 123 as they move from one position to another.

Think as a facilitator

If you think of yourself as a friend or facilitator rather than a teacher they will find themselves more comfortable and easy with you. You can also invite them to teaching processes and provide them an opportunity to express and grow together.