Physiologically, regular yoga practice will increase your child’s coordination, strength and flexibility. Psychologically, a regular practice of postures, breathing techniques and relaxation exercises can help to balance temperament and relieve stress.
Yoga helps to:
Give children better sleep at night
Postures such as Downward Dog increases the flow of blood to the sleep center in the brain, which encourages better rest when children go to sleep at night.
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Improve strength and flexibility
Through regular practice of yoga poses, children will develop better strength and flexibility that will help them excel in sports and have better psychomotor control.
Increase concentration, focus and attention
As children partake in repeated breathing exercises and practice their poses, they will learn how to focus — they will learn to be more mindful of themselves and their surroundings.
Increase self-esteem
Yoga is a non-competitive hobby that allows children to develop and learn at their own speed without the pressure of feeling unable to match up to others.
Decrease anxiety and relieve stress
The soothing routines that yoga gives children will help them to slow down and take things easy as yoga is something that is done at a slow pace with no demands on them. It increases their ability to relax.
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Increase compassion and trust
Yoga teaches children to relate to others and the world around them through the calm interactions in the class.
Improves digestion and ease gas pains for children
Certain yoga poses are great for opening the stomach area and helping improve digestion by keeping digestive juices flowing and some are good for stretching out muscles to help children relief their gas pains.
Strengthen the immune system
A calm and soothed nervous system is the best way to strengthen and maintain the immune system.
Strengthen social connection and develop a sense of community
In a digital age, children come into less contact with others than before. Yoga helps bring them together in a peaceful and fun learning environment.
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Express themselves better
Yoga teaches children how to open up and get in touch with their inner-selves and teaches them how to better convey their intentions.
Kids learn more about the world around them
While in various poses, the teacher may get the children to imagine that they are the animals that inspired the poses. This helps them to understand how the yoga poses came about and the characteristics of those animals too.
Helps calm children with ADD
Children who suffer from ADD benefit from yoga as it teaches calming, relaxing breathing techniques, and the focused time in specific postures helps still the children. Yoga helps to keep those hyperactive tendencies in a more positive direction.
Develop creativity and imagination
During the class, children will get a chance to expand their creativity and imagination as they pretend to be the animals whose poses they mimic, such as barking in downward dog, or mooing while in the cow pose.
