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Yoga For Children

The children of today are the adults of tomorrow. Yoga can help them to develop and nurture the necessary skills to help them cope with their life path.

Most children today live in a world where they often have to cope with the pressures that life deals them, alone. Children may also be more likely to lead an imbalanced lifestyle of more time indoors (eg with computers and videogames), poorer diets and less times outdoors or exercising. Some of the common sources of stress in young children can include busy parents, schooling and competitive sports. Media and advertising has a tremendous influence on our children, telling them how to look and how to be. We all have a need to belong and peer pressure can be such that a vulnerable child will negate their own individuality to 'fit in'. They may feel worthless unless constantly achieving or be afraid of achieving for fear of appearing different.

Under stress a child, like an adult, may become physically or mentally unwell, they can develop sleeping and eating disorders, find it difficult to concentrate and, in extreme cases, behavioural problems may follow. The so called easy and happy childhood years can become a nightmare.

Imagine if you had been taught at an early age to have a solitary place within yourself where you can find stillness and peace. Would you have faced your life differently and with more confidence? I know I would have. Yoga can teach children tools that they can continue to use throughout their life. It can lay the foundations for a lifelong practice.

Yoga is known for correcting postural problems and can strengthen a child's body and improve flexibility and coordination. It can aid their ability to breathe more effectively, digest and assimilate food in a more productive way, and this is just the beginning. Through regular practice children develop a stronger awareness of their body and an understanding of how the whole body wants to work together in harmony. Did you know at the age of seven or eight the pineal gland starts regressing and the sex hormones start functioning in the body. Yoga practice prolongs the life of the pineal gland so this means that puberty can be delayed until children are more emotionally able to grow into an adult body.

Through the many different techniques used in teaching yoga to children, they are taught how to develop and maintain their own creativity, self expression and imagination, keeping their childlike self alive, awakening and maintaining full use of all of their senses. The best stress relief there is! Something most adults spend a long time rekindling.

The Yamas and Niyamas teach children to take responsibility for the foods they eat, the lifestyle choices they make, the company they keep, their thoughts, behaviour, feelings, and teaches self-love and respect of all things.

Children are taught how to breathe in shapes: circles for balance and relaxation, squares to feel the pauses and stillness in between breaths and staircases to release anger, fears and frustrations. Through this experience children learn how it feels to deliberately change the shape of the breath.

How many times are children asked to be quite still and concentrate? As yoga develops discipline of the mind, through practise children are taught how to concentrate, quieten their mind and become still in a relaxed body. These skills are beneficial day to day and will also help to support learning and exam performance.

Yoga can build and maintain self-confidence and self discipline and, through regular practise, develops and maintains a positive self-image. This, in turn, can strengthen a child's ability to express feelings and bottled up thoughts in a positive and constructive way, aiding communication and deepening relationships with those around them.

In a children's yoga class it in not uncommon to sing, play charades, draw pictures of a visualisation we are working with and make dough models of the animal shapes we adopt in our asanas. The children are encouraged take home their creations to remind them of the skills they are learning.

Most importantly though, teaching yoga to children is fun and light-hearted. As the poem by Iris Hesselden says, it keeps the Magic alive.

Lesley Wood (Namrata)
North East Regional Representative Yoga for Children


Magic

There is Magic all around us,
if we only use our eyes.
There’s enchantment in the springtime,
In the fields and in the skies.
There’s a blessing in the west wind
As it whispers in the trees,
There is healing in the sunlight
And the murmur of the seas.

There is magic in the morning
As we make another start,
There is kindness all about us,
and a smile can touch the heart.
There is music in our laughter
And it cheers a rainy day,
There is magic all around us –
Never let it slip away.

Iris Hesselden
Wheel North Spring 1996 Issue

Comments from the children 

- It really relaxes me and takes away all my stress - EC aged 12 

- I’ve had a really stressful day and yoga really relaxes me - CP aged 11 Teeside High School 

- I find yoga a brilliant way to relax after the stress of school exams - H M aged 14 Teesside High School 

- I find yoga a place to escape to in my mind - G P aged 12 Teesside High School

- I like the quietness of yoga - A D aged 14 Nunthorpe After School Club 

- I like being a candle -S G aged 12 Nunthorpe After School Club 

- I like yoga because it gives me loads of energy - J M aged 5 

- I like doing the postures most of all - K E aged 6 ½ 

- Yoga makes me cosy - M S aged 6½ private student 

- Yoga helps me to focus better in Karate -S S aged 7 private student 

- Yoga is relaxing and fun - EM 10yrs St Margaret Clitherows Primary School, South Bank 

- Yoga is good for my posture - MO 9yrs St Margaret Clitherows Primary School, South Bank 

- Yoga is quiet and fun and it takes me to a quiet place - LS St Margaret Clitherows Primary School, South Bank

Telephone: 01287 619065

Mobile: 07905 252164

E-mail: lesleykwood@hotmail.com

Website: www.lesleywood.com