Yoga for kids is very important. Nowadays, kids are very busy. They attend school, have extracurricular activities, do homework in the evenings, and many more. Practicing yoga for kids is beneficial for the same reason as adults. Yoga assists them in relaxing, relieving their stress, having a good sleep, enhancing emotional regulations, improving their mood, manage anxiety. A yoga school in Rishikesh has the best yoga courses for kids.
Yoga helps in making them more mindful. In adults, stress is something that we know how to deal with and are adapted t it right from peer pressure to jobs and all other tensions. Stress is a regular part of the lives of adults. But kids are just learning about stress. Often they don’t know how to manage it or what it is. It is upon us to offer them efficient and required tools for helping them to manage emotions. Yoga helps them in managing stress in a better way.
Here are a few major benefits of yoga for kids:
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Yoga enhances memory and cognitive functioning:
Yoga helps children improve memory and cognitive function by generating more focus within. Practicing yoga needs concentration of body and mind. We must pay more attention to our body movements and how breathing coordinates well with those body movements. Some yoga poses, specifically balancing yoga poses, need you to focus more than other poses. When kids practice yoga, they are mainly practicing their capability to focus on the work. In their daily lives, this translates to better concentration and cognitive functioning at school, which leads to enhanced academic achievements.
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Yoga enhances social relationships:
Yoga is mostly considered an individual activity. While it is true but there is also a social component of yoga. Adults go to yoga classes with others and join the yoga community, where they share their experiences. But for kids, the entire thing is a social one. Yoga for kids mainly includes songs, fun games, and other fun activities that make kids move together and learn from each other, specifically with partner yoga poses. This generates a positive and engaging environment where kids can have fun, talk to each other, and learn to trust one another. Yoga also cultivates self-esteem, empathy in kids, and self-confidence, which helps them develop a more positive bond with others by showing a positive attitude toward others.
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Yoga enhances sleep:
Little body movement before going to sleep helps improve sleep quality. When we are stressed or overwhelmed, our bodies are tense, and our minds become full, decreasing our ability to sleep well. This is true for kids as well. We often feel that kids don’t feel stressed, but this is not true. Even though they are not worried about finances or getting their work on time, they feel pressure for their schoolwork and peer bonds. Practicing yoga assist kids in relieving their stress by utilizing breathing techniques to calm down their mind and the nervous system. The physical practicing of yoga also helps them to ease tension and get rid of negative emotions that are held physically in the body, assisting them in falling asleep early and sleeping longer.
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Yoga enhances strength and controls breath:
When yoga is practiced regularly, we will notice several physical and cognitive changes within our body, specifically improving flexibility, strengthening the upper body, and high mental clarity. All of this strength has a lot to do with the breath. When we breathe quickly or very harshly, we enhance our muscle tension, decrease focus and intensify the fight-to-fight response, negatively affecting both mind and body. Learning proper breathing techniques and building up physical and mental strength right from a young age decrease the chance of obesity and depression and enhance self-confidence, self-esteem, and overall wellbeing.
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Yoga enhances perseverance and high determination:
Yoga is a fun activity for kids where they learn some new yoga poses along with breathing techniques. When something seems very fun for kids, they will always want more. Kids also love the feeling when they master something that they think they cannot do. Such as crow pose, while it is very fun to do but it isn’t easy. But kids learn how to practice this pose and continue practicing it, they become very excited and will want to show all the new things they learned in a yoga class.
This determination and perseverance make kids excited. When this happens, kids will do anything to retain that feeling. In their daily lives, kids can learn that when they stick to something, even if it is difficult pays off. In the same way, they will try to bring that feeling of excitement to other areas in their lives.
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Yoga enhances self-regulation:
Self-regulation is your capability to identify and change your behavior, emotions, and thoughts depending on the situation. Kids with good self-regulation assist kids in solving issues and getting adjusted to new challenges and also help them set and achieve both long-term and short-term goals. When kids pay attention to their minds and bodies, they look inward and understand their feelings and thoughts better. Yoga assists kids in understanding and managing their emotions depending on the situation. Suppose a child is frustrated at school, then they are less likely to pay attention to new material for which they will not retain any of that information and fall behind in the class. But when they learn to reflect inward and identify what they require in any specific situation, kids will learn to manage emotions and situations efficiently and perfectly.
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Yoga enhances independent skills and coping with situations well:
Yoga is both a social and individual activity. One of the major advantages of practicing any activity that is both individual and social is that it helps kids to identify what is social and what is individual. Very rarely do kids do things on their own. Kids have the support and comfort of their families. But this starts changing when they start growing into adolescence or adulthood because of peer pressure, graduating high school, getting a job, and many more. Therefore by enhancing independence when they are kids, we assist them in developing better coping skills. Practicing yoga is one of the best ways to introduce freedom with the support and guidance of the family. Otherwise, they are left with no coping tools when the time arrives for them to be on their own.
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Yoga enhances mood:
Similar to any physical exercise, yoga assists kids in releasing their negative feelings and thoughts, bringing mental clarity and feeling good about themselves. Endorphins are released when we do physical activity like yoga, creating a sense of happiness and calmness. Yoga is also a fun activity where kids can be silly, play games, and be with their friends in a non-competitive environment. Kids learn so much about themselves.
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Yoga decreases stress and anxiety:
Enhanced mood also reduces stress and anxiety. Thus, endorphins that increases mood also decreases stress and anxiety. It is vital for kids to teach them that there should be a balance between negative and positive emotions. Yoga assists in reducing stress by relieving tension from all through the body.
Conclusion
All these benefits make it very clear that yoga is one of the vital tools for the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of children. Practicing yoga is something that we usually do for ourselves to unwind and decrease stress, then why we should not do it for our kids? A certified teacher with 200 hour yoga teacher training in Rishikesh can teach kids better.
