| Like us, our children today are exposed to a multitude of stress factors. There is homework that they must perform daily, the competition exerted from other children, many after school game activities and over-scheduling. Kids also need something relaxe them and relieve stress and many of them are turning to Yoga. Yoga for kids helps them to develop better body awareness; it also teaches them self control, flexibility and coordination. All of these features are simply not available in their normal routines. Yoga for kids has already demonstrated that it can help hyper active children to tone down and brighten up those with attention deficit disorders. Children today crave movement and sensory motor stimuli that can help then balance out their inner souls flow. Yoga for kids will help them channel out this impulses in a positive way. The main poses that seem to work perfectly with kids are the warrior pose and the tree pose. These particular poses helps to instill in them calm, confidence and balance. The trick to get them to do Yoga for kids is to go beyond just doing the proper poses, you should have to get them think about what the real posture means. Let them think that they are really what the poses are symbolizing, let them be the postures. Yoga for kids with partners is also a great way to build up trust with your children. It develops team skills and fosters closer bonding. Some kids when it comes to relaxation have trouble closing their eyes and focusing on their exercises. One thing that encourages a child to relax is visualization. Let them think of something that they really like and let them imagine being like these things and enjoy the experience. It is also a good idea to have them focus out on belly breathing first and have them listen to soothing and relaxing music. Then ask them to imagine their favorite spot in the house or let them think imagine they are in outer space floating, or let them visualize that they are at the beach, playing their favorite sport or doing an activity that they really like. Sometimes for boys letting them think of a favorite girlfriend helps them relax, but this is sometimes hard to do because they become shy and intolerable when this kind of issues are discussed. Just stick to the visualization thing if this technique is quite complicated for you. Every day at the end of each relaxation exercises, encourage the children to share their own experiences. Ask them to tell to the group what it was like to be in their visualized surroundings. Ask them also to share what place have they imagined they where in. Another approach is to create a guided imagination by telling them a story with a calming theme of some sort. As you know children have the most active imagination, they imagine all sorts of things. And at this point of imagination it makes them feel calm. So when doing yoga for kids let them think that they are walking on a green pasture. You can even let them think that they are butterflies in a beautiful garden. The main idea in here is to instill a sense of peace and feeling of oneness with nature. Yoga for kids should be taught more often and in different places. It is important to teach children the meaning of union of mind, body and spirit. There is such a wealth of knowledge we can offer our children with the practice of Yoga. |
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