You’ve probably attended a yoga class. Practiced prenatal yoga while pregnant. Maybe you even took your baby to a “mommy & me” yoga session or two after your little one arrived. But then they got older and your yoga practice once again became a solo activity – if you even managed to squeeze it back into your schedule amidst all the other duties of motherhood.
When we picture yoga and some of the more advanced poses, it’s easy to think that it’s an activity best reserved for adults. But did you know yoga is actually a great activity for kids?
Here are five ways yoga can positively impact your child, but the benefits extend far beyond this short list. You can learn about the rest in this in-depth guide by Mom Loves Best.
1. Yoga Helps Promote Lifelong Physical Health.
Between the standard American diet and our increasingly sedentary lifestyle, obesity has become a health epidemic in the United States. While yoga may not be a high-impact cardiovascular activity, incorporating it into your child’s daily life helps to instil the importance of regular movement and care for their body’s health. It not only has immediate health benefits but sets them up for a lifetime of prioritizing their physical health and regular movement by building this habit early.
2. Yoga Reduces Hyperactivity and Improves Focus.
More children than ever have been put on medication to manage hyperactive behavior. While there are certainly cases for which this is a medical necessity, many experts agree that ADD and ADHD are likely overdiagnosed, thanks mainly to rigid expectations in school as well as fewer opportunities to play outside as compared to generations past. A soothing activity like yoga can help your child calm down, decompress, deal with the overstimulation of everyday life, and help them learn how to tune out external distractions. Studies have even shown that yoga can be effective in improving the symptoms of children with ADHD.
3. Yoga Promotes Better Mental Health.
Today’s children are facing more pressures than ever before – like academic expectations, the increased competitiveness of sports, social media pressures, and navigating the changing social landscape of today’s young people. As a result, child and adolescent mental health has declined rapidly, with parents searching for ways to reduce their children’s risk and promote positive mental health. Yoga helps teach coping mechanisms that can aid kids in warding off anxiety and depression, and even helps them to improve their self-esteem. It also can help with stress relief, which also promotes improved mental health.
4. Yoga Helps with School Performance.
In addition to an improved ability to focus as addressed above, yoga can help with your child’s school performance in other ways, too. If your child is a kinesthetic learner, they can integrate yoga techniques into their study or homework time to improve their understanding and retention of academic material. It also teaches them the importance of discipline for skill improvement, which directly translates to their educational journey – while it’s not always easy, consistency yields results. It also helps to encourage creativity and self-expression, which is necessary for healthy child development.
5. Yoga Can Improve Sleep.
Sleep is absolutely critical for healthy child development, academic performance, and good mental health. Unfortunately, today’s children struggle with sleep more than any other generation. Whether it’s due to less time outdoors, fewer opportunities to run off energy, increased exposure to screens and sleep-disturbing blue light, high-level academic pressures, incredibly busy extracurricular schedules, or increasingly early school start times, today’s children are at serious risk for problems due to their lack of adequate, restful sleep. Participation in a regular yoga practice not only increases their opportunities for physical activity, but can also teach them skills to calm down and focus at night, helping to improve the quality of their sleep.
Stop thinking of yoga as an activity that’s only appropriate for adults. It’s great for the whole family, and there are plenty of poses your kids can do from their very first session. Give them grace at the beginning, don’t expect perfection, and keep it fun – and before you know it, you just might have a mini-yogi on your hands!