Calm kids practice yoga

CALM KIDS PRACTICE YOGA

Yoga is a wonderful practice for children to begin at any age. Kids are very open to most things and yoga is a great way to teach them about being calm and learning to be aware of their bodies. Yoga is a wonderful tool to bring awareness of the body whatever age the student may be. Children in fact are great students of yoga.

Finding a kids yoga class in your town or city may not always be easy but once you do your children will thank you for it. Kids react very well to yoga as it is a very simple and effective way of controlling and becoming aware of the breath and body.

My two children enjoy and practice yoga at home with me very often. It is a part of our life now and they understand and I suppose think that all mamas practice yoga in the middle of their living room. My children are more surrendered to yoga in fact than many of my friends. They are open to the breathing exercises as they have witnessed me doing them many times. I use these breathing techniques to calm them down often.

If my kids are going abit crazy and need to bring the energy down I use a very simple and effective breathing technique. I ask them to breathe in through the nose deeply and then exhale through the mouth, loosening the whole body as they do so. At the beginning of this practice they fought it somewhat as they were wound up as we started it. But actually, it took a very short time until they associated it with calming down. Now, I do not even need to say anything to them at all to start this process. I simply look at them and begin to breathe in through my nose and they join me. As we all exhale through the mouth with a sigh they visibly relax and stop whatever craziness they were involved in. A wonderful result, very quickly and really quite easily. The joys of yoga are many fold.

My kids also love the asanas (physical postures). Children are not going to have the concentration of adults to attend and sit through an long hour to two hour yoga class but they can absorb the postures and apply them to their life in general.

I had a friend over the other day lamenting the state of her body and how hard it was for her to begin and continue a regular exercise routine. I was saying that to begin and continue is the only way and it gets easier quite quickly and far more enjoyable quite quickly. My little boy, who is 3 then went into his room and brought out his yoga mat. He invited his 6 year old sister to join him in the lounge room with her mat and they proceeded to bust some little yoga moves, much to the delight and amusement of my girlfriend. They had just shown her, without a doubt that yoga can work the body and be a practice that imbibes the soul with a great amount of joy and wellbeing. To be taught that a 3 year old can show the way to yoga and the ease of movement and calmness of spirit that it can bring was great.

My kids love the fact that we all practice yoga together and it brings our family great unity. Ultimately, my children are definitely calmer and more centered in their being. They relate to the practice of yoga as something that exists on a daily basis in our family and in their personal lives. They use this tool as a way of calming down at bedtime. It only takes them 3 inhales and exhales to reach a state of calm. They can lie down and have a story read to them and drift off to sleep easily after this practice. Three breaths is all it takes and it only took us about 10 times to do this before it was settled in their internal make up. Yoga is a very deep practice and children will connect with its spiritual nature as they are still spiritually based when they are young.

Allow your children the gift of the breath and life. Yoga helps kids stay calm and feel strong. Give them a chance to find out, it’s all within us.