Yoga for Kids: Benefits and Best Practices

Yoga, an ancient Indian practice, now getting wildly popular in the west, is a practice of uniting the body and mind with the purpose of allowing a more conscious, spiritual, and relaxed lifestyle. Yoga allows one to calm the mind and control how they react to different situations by making them more mentally and physically aligned.

Though it is a fast-growing practice, a lot of people still are unaware of the full benefits of yoga for kids. Yes, that’s right, yoga is not just for adults. There are amazing benefits of yoga, and there is a lot of simple yoga poses for kids to start practicing.

As we know, kids’ minds are more accepting and adapting to that of adults. It is at a young age that we learn the maximum number of things and adopt habits that last a lifetime. So why not learn some good habits that would help shape a better future and complete life. 

6 Easy Yoga Poses for Kids

Let’s look at some easy yoga poses for kids with names of the different asanas, especially those that are beginners to this art form and know the importance of yoga.

1. Child Pose

One of the easiest Yoga poses for kids, all you need to do is sit on your knees, with your hands resting on your knees and hips touching the heels of your feet. Then extend your arms as far ahead as possible, bending your body forward as you do so while keeping your heels in contact with your hips. Take a few deep breaths, then return to the original position.

2. Sitting Pose

Another one of the simple yoga for kids is sitting with your legs crossed, with both palms gently placed on your knees, facing upward, and the thumb and index fingers touching. Take deep breaths and focus on breathing. 

3. Cobra Pose

Lie down on your stomach, with your palm on the side of your chest and toes pointed out. Lift up your torso supported by your hands, extend them, so the hands are straight up with your head facing forward; then breathe in and out deep. 

4. Forward Seated Fold

Sit on the ground with your feet forward, bending down to touch your toes and stay in that position while breathing deeply.

5. Butterfly Pose

For this pose, you need to sit down, back straight, and make your feet touch each other and your knees facing out. Hold your feet with your hands and flap them like a butterfly’s wings. Take deep breaths while doing this.

6. Bridge Pose

This is yet another simple pose for kids. To do this, lie down on your back. Then fold your legs to make your knee face the ceiling. Keep your hands on your side. Then lift your hips up to make a bridge. Hold this while you take deep breaths. 

Top 6 Benefits of Yoga Exercises for Kids

There are a lot of health and wellness benefits of yoga poses for kids, and as such, parents and adults should be aware of these benefits so as to better encourage and inspire children to practice yoga. 

Helps Boost Confidence

By aligning one’s mind and body into a coherent and spiritual one, yoga helps provide more consciousness and hence more confidence. The ability to manage one’s thoughts and actions is directly related to their confidence in themselves. Kids become more aware of their capabilities and are more open to trying new things and facing new challenges. 

Helps Improve Attention Span and Focus

Attention, Concentration, and Focus are the pillars on which the practice of yoga rests. If a person lacks either of these, they would not be able to do this exercise well. The various positions in which one is supposed to hold their body for some time require strength and power. Lack of concentration can result in not being able to hold the position well, if at all. 

Improves Flexibility And Builds Strength

Surely this is common knowledge. Everyone who is aware of yoga, even in the littlest possible way, knows that the poses are great for promoting flexibility of the body and building strength. By requiring one to balance themselves in various positions, some of which even require them to lift their body weight, yoga is a great exercise for improving flexibility, agility, and strength. 

Provides a Full Body Workout

As we all know, the different yoga poses allow for a full-body stretch and workout. By bending and twisting our bodies in different positions, we get a full-body workout, providing just enough tension in all our muscles. It also helps in keeping our muscles and joints limber for a longer time.

Helps Manage And Reduce Anxiety

Children today go through a lot of hard work and stress in their life. Whether it is from school or outside, this leads to them suffering from anxiety from a very young age. Yoga provides a safe and effective outlet for them to manage these feelings and avoid anxiety and hypertension. 

Teaches Them Discipline

Acting as a physical outlet to explore and express one’s emotions and feelings, yoga improves discipline in children. They learn to manage their emotions and emotional reactions to certain situations which might not be seen as particularly favorable or to their liking. 

Conclusion

As is evident from this short article, there are numerous benefits of kids doing yoga and several extremely simple poses for kids to try out. As guardians, it is up to us to encourage them to observe daily exercises. Even for children who are not very physically active or keen on doing very high-energy exercises, yoga will do the needful.

It will allow them to open their minds and explore new possibilities by engaging themselves in a healthier lifestyle. Exercising is essential for the all-round development of a person, it triggers neurochemical reactions which act as a driving force in our overall development and what better age to start than when they are kids and really shaping their lives from nothing into something they would like to enjoy for the rest of their lives.