Sometimes people think I’m a little crazy when I tell them I do yoga with kids as part of their treatment in physical therapy. Yoga for kids facilitates the development of strength, coordination, balance, and much more as I recently learned in a continuing education course for Pediatric Yoga. Although, more recently yoga programs for children seem to be a much more accepted and even a desired activity for kids by their parents. Many of the preschools I was touring for my daughter boasted about offering yoga as a part of their weekly curriculum. Yoga has such wonderful benefits for children in many settings, including in a clinic as part of a physical therapy treatment program, in a sports setting with young athletes, and even in preschools.
In the clinic I would often see kiddos with some broad diagnoses such as lack of coordination, hypotonia, or gross motor developmental delay. By using yoga in some of our treatment sessions I could work on great core strengthening and balance through the various yoga poses. We would pretend to be various animals or objects in nature and develop and whole imaginary scenario for the treatment session, and the kids would have a blast…and I would have a very productive session targeting many of our therapy goals! Yoga exercises have been one of my go-to activities for core strength and balance for some time, but more recently for some of the attention focusing breathing exercises as well. Especially for those highly active kiddos struggling with coordination, some of the focusing and breathing exercises that go along with yoga can really help to calm them down and direct their attention to the activity at hand. In addition, the deep breathing from yoga can assist with emotional control and self-regulation. Both of which are things I’m constantly trying to work on with my own daughter.
Yoga is great even with young athletes. Growing up, one of the gymnastics centers I attended used yoga as part of our daily warm-up. My coaches were ahead of their time with the implementation of yoga with kids. At the time, I thought it was strange and didn’t quite see the benefits that I now know exist. I just knew it was something my mom did, and I wanted to rush through it to hurry up and get to all the other “fun” gymnastics :-). The use of yoga with my gymnastics team was offering all the gymnasts a chance to effectively warm-up and dynamically stretch and strengthen muscles, while oxygenating tissues in preparation for the physical demands of our practice. The breathing aspects of yoga provided additional benefits for directing our focus as well. Yoga practices can be a great compliment to the training of young athletes for a variety of reasons.
Having children of my own, I now have a better appreciation for what my patients’ parents would go through attempting to incorporate home exercise programs into their daily life, especially with rambunctious little ones. I have an extremely active three year old, who like many three year olds, has a very hard time winding down before bed. She and her younger sister get so wild running around and playing after dinner and bath…which of course often leads to one of them accidentally getting hurt if their father and I don’t get them calmed down before it escalates to that point. We’ve learned that doing just a few deep breaths with several yoga poses right before bed will calm her down and help with our nightly routine. At her age, doing the yoga pose correctly doesn’t really matter. It is more of the benefit of deep breathing and activating muscles with slow sustained movements. Now, do I do yoga with my daughters every night, no…let’s be honest, life certainly gets in the way and it is hard to stick to an exact routine every single night. But we definitely make time for yoga when I see the girls are a little too over active right before bed. And I must say, there is nothing cuter than watching an 18 month old try to imitate yoga poses. 🙂
Yoga Basics
Here are some Yoga basics that I use both in the clinic and with my own kids. Deep breathing is one of the most important parts of Yoga. With young children it is easiest to teach them to exhale all the air out and then a deep breath in will come naturally. Some fun activities to do are blowing on silk scarves to make them flutter in the breeze like pretty flower petals on a spring day, trying to roar like a lion, or blowing a great big bubble. The key is to facilitate slow breaths. A calming bottle is a great way to encourage slow deep breaths too….
- fill a plastic bottle 1/4 of the way full with Elmer’s glitter glue
- fill the remainder of the bottle with hot water
- add a few drops of desired color of food coloring
- allow the water to cool completely before sealing the lid
- Shake it up and enjoy 🙂
You can adjust how quickly the glitter will settle by altering the amount of glue – the more glue, the longer it will take for glitter to settle. And for an extra sparkly calming jar, I will occasionally add a little extra loose glitter (I’ve found the medium to large size glitter pieces work best as opposed to a super fine glitter).
Below are a few Yoga poses that are good for just starting out or for a simple bedtime routine. I also found a great Yoga card set with pictures of yoga poses and imaginative descriptions for kids on Amazon that I’ve been using with my daughters lately. The illustrations are fantastic and they give the girls a nice visual as we do our yoga.
Using yoga for kids is a fun way to exercise, relax, and so much more! There are tons of resources out there if you are interested in learning more, but hopefully this post helps you get started!