It is really not surprising to find a lot of adults practicing health yoga to help them to become more fit and to calm their nerves after a stressful day at work. In fact, yoga practitioners claim that this ancient art has really helped in boosting their mental and physical health. However, not many people are aware that yoga is also helpful for children. Aside from enhancing the blood circulation, flexibility, and stamina of kids, yoga can also improve their concentration and mental acuity. Yoga is actually safe and good for your children. Naturally, if your young son or daughter is just a beginner, he or she should not be asked to perform advanced yoga poses. In order to ensure the safety of the children, you need to keep the following things in mind.
First, you need to ensure that your children know about the basics of health yoga. However, it would be better that you make the explanation fun and creative because kids have shorter attention spans than adults. Besides, the spiritual teachings of yoga may be difficult for your children to understand and digest so you should not start lecturing them about these things at the very beginning of their yoga. What you can do is to make yoga look like a fun exercise or workout routine.
If you have been a regular a yoga practitioner for several years, you can probably teach your children on your own. Just start with the very basic, concentrating more on simple stretching and breathing exercises. It is crucial that you do not make the yoga sessions to long. You can probably start with 15-minute sessions at first. As your kids grow and become more interested in health yoga, then that is the time you can prolonging the sessions. If there are available classes of yoga for kids, it might be a better idea to leave the training of your children to the experts.
Lastly, you should pay close attention to your children while they are performing yoga positions. You need to guide them carefully as they may not be very good in following instructions. You do not want your kid to end up with a stretched muscle or a broken hip because you failed to pay attention to them, particularly the younger ones. Moreover, you can also make your health yoga sessions with your children and spouse a family affair. This way, you are also helping boost your children’s emotional health as well.
