Children’s Yoga: A Guide to this Fun Activity!
Yoga is an ancient activity that is now very well known among adults. Did you know that you can also practice yoga with your children? In fact, today there are many classes adapted to the little ones and the very young! Discover Yoga for Kids with Yogom!
In this article:
What are the benefits of Yoga for Kids?
Yoga for Children has many benefits! The first one is toteach the child to channel his energy and better accept his emotions. However there are many others such as :
- Stretches the muscles and tones the whole body
- Softens joints and increases mobility
- Relieves respiratory problems and improves heart function
- Improves digestive and sleep disorders
- Helps to concentrate, to calm one’s thoughts
- Reduces stress and anxiety (There are specific exercises to do before going to sleep to reduce bedtime anxiety)
In any case, if you have succeeded in making your child love yoga, it is at least a good habit that you will have integrated into his routine. He will surely thank you when he is an adult for giving him such healthy habits!
At what age can you start Yoga for Children?
Contrary to what you may think, there is no age to start Yoga for Children ! Some people even say that you can start from the first months of your child’s life. However, the exercises will be very different if they are done with a 3 year old or a 10 year old of course! You can start with very simple postures and movements for the very young. In any case, the search for alignment and “perfection” in the postures only comes much later. The main idea is to make this practice through play to give the child the desire to practice and continue! For this, there are many possibilities that we will see in the rest of this article!
Making Yoga for Kids Fun
It is important to make children’s yoga fun so that they can enjoy the activity. If the child is bored during the practice, he or she will not want to continue, nor will he or she get anything positive out of it.
So there are different ways to make Yoga for Kids fun:
- Offer a story: the first thing to do in Children’s Yoga is to present the practice in the form of a story. It helps the child to focus and visualize what to do. It’s automatically more fun to tell him to imitate a tree getting a really big gust of wind than to just ask him to stretch the side of his body.
- Imitating animals: yoga is full of postures with animal names, suggesting that your child perform them to imitate their favorite animal is a great option! It can also be a great way to discover the different animals (forest, savannah, farm, etc.) and their calls! (I promise, your child will not be overexcited after this activity, a return to calm is planned in each session!)
- Practice with others: If you practice yoga, you may be used to practicing alone. But for a child, this can be extremely destabilizing! Use this time to do a 2-person activity or more by including the other parent or siblings. Laughter and good memories guaranteed! Only child? No worries, you can easily propose this activity to your child’s friends, who will certainly keep good memories of it! And who knows, maybe they’ll like it so much that it becomes your weekly routine.
Ideas of postures for a Yoga session for children
To begin with, there are many very simple yoga postures that can be perfectly adapted to the practice of yoga for a child. We find for example the famous posture of the dog head down, but not only!
For children, many of the postures are actually very accessible, and some will certainly make them laugh a lot:
- The cat’s posture (round back and hollow back)
- The lion’s pose (laughter guaranteed if you ask them to do the lion’s roar)
- The head down dog but also its variant with the dog that stretches!
- The camel
- The frog
- The boat (and its 2 person variant!)
- The tree
- The warrior (to do like mom and dad)
- etc
The course of a yoga session for children
A yoga session for children is divided into different stages, in the same way as a session for adults. The biggest difference between the two is practice time. Indeed, for the children, we avoid making sessions of more than 45 minutes (we can pass to one hour when they grow up and they appreciate the practice). In general terms, a yoga session for children can go like this:
- step 1) Entering into the practice: short presentation of each of the participating children, then a moment of relaxation with music to calm down before starting the postures.
- step 2) The postures: through a story, the child will be led to realize different postures. They can be introduced in different ways. Via a card game system, mime or other.
- step 3) The final meditation: after a moment of realization of postures rich in excitement and energy, comes the moment of return to calm. The final meditation, as with adult yoga, helps to calm down, refocus and realize all that one has felt during the practice.
With what material should I practice Children’s Yoga?
- Which yoga mat to choose to practice yoga with your child?
To practice yoga for children, they will need a comfortable and thick mat to avoid hurting themselves. A carpet from the Yomad range can be more than enough. Its small price makes it particularly accessible. However, if you are looking for a mat for yourself, it will depend more on your practice and the type of yoga you practice besides the one for children. If you don’t know which one to choose, don’t hesitate to read the article dedicated to how to choose your carpet on the blog . Still haven’t found an answer? Try the Yogom Yoga Mat Buying Guide and take the Yogom Quiz to find out which mat is right for you based on your practice and your needs.
- The cork yoga brick: an aid to access the postures and work on balance
You can also practice with bricks when you do yoga with your child. Indeed, it can also exercise his grip on objects as well as his balance!
- The EVA yoga brick: the brick for small budgets
Afraid of damaging your pretty cork bricks with your child? Take the EVA bricks instead. It is the low cost version of the cork brick, it is also lighter. This can also be convenient if your child is still very small.
Button : I discover the EVA bricks Yogom
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Carpet transport bag (Copie) (Copie)
Original price was: 24,00€.14,90€Current price is: 14,90€. -
Meditation cushion wool
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Carpet transport bag
Original price was: 22,00€.14,90€Current price is: 14,90€. -
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Brick Yoga in Liege (Copie)
18,00€
Where can I find a yoga class for children?
- Special sessions for children or teenagers are now sometimes set up in yoga studios. These usually take place on Wednesday or Saturday mornings. If you already practice in a studio, don’t hesitate to ask your teacher if he or she offers this type of class!
- You may also consider taking online classes if you don’t feel like leaving your home to practice with your child at home. In the post-covid era, doing yoga at home has never been easier! Outside of online studios, there is now an almost endless resource of free online yoga classes on Youtube. The Yogom Youtube channel offers you more than 150 free courses.
- If the weather is good, it is possible to find outdoor yoga classes in parks or other places, so don’t hesitate to explore this avenue if it’s something that interests you. This can be a great way to get your child to practice yoga, but why not their friends too!
Discover a free online yoga class for children available in replay on the Yogom youtube channel:
Discover all the styles of yoga that exist to choose the one that suits you: see our special file !
To go further
You liked this article but you are still hungry? Yogom proposes you some tracks to go further. Many books have been published on Yoga for Children, here are some of them!
- My yoga book, 30 playful postures from A to Z by Shobana R. Vinay : Fall in love with this set of beautiful illustrated cards especially for children. 30 yoga postures adapted to children are presented.
- 1, 2, 3 yoga! The first yoga for children by Geneviève Devinat and Michèle Desrues : Introduce your child to yoga with a goose game system! It’s hard to make it more playful and fun for a child
- The easiest yoga book in the world, special for 5-10 year olds, from the Simplissime collection, by Isabelle Koch: discover twenty or so postures for young and old, to get the whole family into yoga!
