Introducing Your Kids To Yoga

How do you introduce your kids to yoga? You could send them to a yoga class, but maybe there is no kids yoga near you or the times don’t suit. So how do you introduce them to yoga?

My kids watching me down dog in the living room is the norm in our house! Sometimes they join me for a few down dogs or balancing trees. Children love a balance pose!  When people go to yoga class they roll out their mat and roll about on the floor making funny shapes with their bodies, breathe and try and accept our bodies as they are today. Kids have that bit nailed! Kids are fantastic at rolling about on the floor enjoying their bodies. It is us adults that usually telling them to stop! Kids are brilliant at living on the moment. 

When my youngest gets upset he likes to get his play doh out or his art materials. He gets totally involved and you can literally hear his breathing change. My eldest, L has had times in his life when he has really struggled with anxiety and so introducing him to simple breathing techniques he could use during the school day was really helpful to him. 

When L comes home from school, he goes straight outside and if you look at him out the window he is just walking round the garden in circles. It is his way of decompressing after a long day. It seems to be part walking meditation, part story creation time. 

I think what I am trying to say is that maybe it is not the obvious asana poses we should be worrying about introducing to our children. Asana can certainly be a fun activity for any child but maybe the best way to introduce yoga to kids is gently encouraging mindful activities, breathing when they feel strong emotions and teaching them compassion, kindness and self love. So maybe some of the other bits of yoga are actually the bits we might want to focus on. If we look at the 8 limbs of yoga then we have a a great framework to introduce our kids to yoga and they might help us parent better too.