Yoga has been around for centuries and has been widely known for its health benefits. There are many reasons that it is a great idea to incorporate yoga into kid’s daily lives. Not only can it help them get a better sleep, yoga also helps boost their immune system. If you are just starting out your research about yoga, we will go over some of the reasons why yoga is good for your kid’s well-being.
Promoting a Healthy Body and Confidence
One of the great benefits that yoga offers for kids is that it promotes a healthy body. Through the different poses that strengthens, stretches and builds coordination, yoga helps build up a child’s body. This helps them to reduce risks to injuries from the other physical activities that they do throughout their day by increasing their flexibility and blood flow. If they do end up injured, this will also help them to heal more quickly as their body and muscles are more conditioned.
While boosting their health, yoga also allows kids to build up confidence. Through the practice of the poses they are able to see themselves improve quite quickly. From possibly not being able to touch their toes to seeing themselves slowly being able to reach farther, they can achieve much and feel more confident to do more challenging things.
Improving Concentration and Stress Management
Concentration is a huge part of children’s lives. Whether they are at home, school or out in other public places, they need the ability to be focused. Yoga is something that helps kids become more in tune with their bodies as they need to focus and concentrate on the different poses. While they concentrate, they also practice controlled breathing, which in turns helps with any feelings of stress or anxiety. They are able to become mindful of how they feel, what is around them and to be able to let stress slide as they center their thoughts and focus on the poses and breathing. Yoga is widely known as something that is used to help reduce stress and anxiety due to the controlled breathing and the focus that is needed.
Coordination and Balance
As kids tend to grow in spurts, they can sometimes end up with loss of control of their body as they find their balance and coordination with their new-found height. They may seem to be tripping over themselves constantly or like they have sea legs. When kids practice yoga on a regular basis, they are constantly challenged to balance and have coordination so that when they are faced with growth, they have an easier time adjusting.
If you would like to try yoga for your child, there are many great resources out there. There are many more blogs, articles, apps and DVDs that help guide you and your child through the poses and proper breathing techniques. I found the easiest to follow was by watching a DVD as my phone was to hard to watch and help my child at the same time on such a small screen. So, I found Kids World Yoga. It is great for anyone who is a beginner and it does encourage to end the pose when you are done so that your child (or you) don’t feel that they have to push themselves beyond what they can do. If your child is younger there are some great ones that are great for the little ones too, for example YogaKids, Vol. 3: Silly to Calm is a great way to start introducing yoga to your little ones as it is fun to do!