Giving the Gift of Yoga for Children

Educators and parents are always looking for ways to make kids calmer and more focused, especially in school. If you think you've tried just about everything, why not incorporate a few minutes of yoga into a child's daily activities--even in the classroom! Yoga for children facilitates stress relief and physical fitness at an early age. It also integrates movement into the education process, making learning enjoyable for young people. Yoga is an exciting medium through which kids can explore their creativity and gain a sense of body awareness. Yoga for children is designed to show that there are many dimensions to learning--making kids feel like they're a part of their environment and the world at large.
The youth of today are faced with many stressors: school, home life, peers, and expectations from the media. The stress and pressure that life presents only increases as children grow up. Developing coping mechanisms at an early age equips them with the strength and confidence they'll need in the future. Furthermore, stress influences the way children absorb knowledge and interact with those around them. It can also have an adverse affect on self-esteem and physical health. Yoga for children makes learning fun and adventurous, all the while helping kids relax, center and stay free of stress.
Imagine you are walking into a classroom full of second graders. All the students are bored, fidgety and anything but focused. You then tell them to "take five," and they understand this to mean take five deep breaths. Then, you prompt them to stand by their desks and get into the "tree pose." All at the same time, the children stand up beside their desks, focus straight ahead, then lift one leg and both arms into the tree pose. Your students already know this pose, but you guide them through it anyway. When the students sit back down, they are calm, alert and ready for their lessons.
Yoga for children blends seamlessly with storytelling, music, and other creative and expressive arts. Traditional yoga is reinvented in a way that suits the developing bodies and the playful spirits of the youth that practice it. Kids' yoga practice uses the Multiple Intelligences Theory, developed by Harvard educator Howard Garder, to create a framework for yoga activities that become fully integrated into the core educational curriculum.
Teachers, parents and professionals who work with children can take kids yoga teacher training in order to effectively bring yoga for children into the home or classroom. If you don't want to undergo training, consider purchasing a kids yoga DVD from YogaKids to guide everyone through the poses. Focused parents and educational professionals who want to integrate yoga into their children's schedules can help bring about the development of a healthy lifestyle, better test scores, improved knowledge retention and a more harmonious learning environment. By bringing yoga into pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms, teachers and students alike are adopting a learning motto of "less stress, greater success."

Written by Kacy Suther. Learn more about yoga for children with a kids yoga dvd. Offers kids yoga teacher training, yoga poses for kids, more at yogakids.com .