Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

Adults undoubtedly have busy lives these days, but our kids also do. School all day, after-school activities and homework, friend and family time and weekend plans! Practicing yoga is good for adults with stressful lives, and it can also benefit kids for all the same reasons. We all know that yoga can help to relieve stress and anxiety, improve your sleep, and mood, as well as keep you fit. Yoga can also teach your kids to be mindful, which is important to teach at a young age. It’s important to teach our kids ways to handle stress in their lives - which will help them as they grow into adulthood.

How old were you when you started practicing yoga? If you began as an adult, you know how transformational yoga can be in all aspects of your life. Maybe you stepped onto the mat when you were a child, and if you did––lucky you! Yoga offers a myriad of benefits for your mind, body, and spirit, and for many of us is what helps keep us balanced in our lives. During 2020, many children are home instead of in school and need all the gifts yoga has to offer more than ever. Just as yoga helps develop strength, flexibility, balance, and equanimity for adults, it also offers vital tools for children to live healthier happier lives. One of the primary ways yoga helps children is by encouraging self-love and self-acceptance. Yoga teaches kids more about their own bodies and minds. One of yoga’s messages is to remind us we are all different, yet perfect as we are. If children understand that whatever shape or size they are is acceptable, they may avoid body image pressures that inundate us. If children can learn to love themselves from a young age, they are better equipped to handle all the negative messages society can present to them.

Have you ever watched a small child learn to do something for the first time? I was watching a little boy put a brand new puzzle together, and this was the largest puzzle he had ever built. As he was arranging the pieces, I noticed some of them were backwards or upside down, and he was trying to put pieces together that wouldn’t fit. I just sat there silently, internally laughing at the dialogue my ego was having that instantly saw this scenario was just another playfully packaged, yet somehow intrinsically deep life lesson.

I’m not talking about role playing in the bedroom or playing dress up with my kids. I’m talking about getting down and dirty as a yogi. I am obsessed with yoga. I’m hooked on the way it makes me feel mentally, physically and emotionally. It provides a serene high that I’m pretty sure can’t be bottled and sold in any dirty dank alley.

We were all born with flexibility. It is life experience and stress that tightens up our bodies, rounds our shoulders, and gives us neck and back pain. Imagine if you would have learned yoga postures and deep breathing techniques when you were a kid. How might your body and mind be different today? While we cannot go back in time to change our own lives, we can offer the opportunity of learning yoga to our children. These days children live a fast paced life of school, homework, sports, music lessons, and other activities that combined together can cause stress. Kids yoga can provide an opportunity for children to slow down, stretch, and connect to their inner joy so that they can learn to cope with stress, and stay flexible. Here are more ways that children can benefit from yoga: