Children and teenagers most of all need energetic activity and movement. This is due both to children’s psychology (they quickly get bored with monotony, so the child often gets distracted) and necessity. So the distinctive feature of yoga for children and teenagers is its dynamism.
Dynamic movements help to activate confining joints and muscles, train the body, and make it pliable and more flexible. Children can easily repeat a new movement; besides that, their speed has a positive effect on the brain: it removes the apathy and contributes to overcoming various complexes and fears.
Benefits Yoga for Children and Teenagers
Practicing yoga for Children trains courage in children and helps them to gain grace, balance, agility, flexibility, keen perception; it also helps to develop the capacity for mental and physical self-control.
If a teacher changes the training curricula, it helps to bring diversity and change to the practice, which children love so much, and at the same time maximizes the benefit. The instructor should be well versed in all the peculiarities of children’s perception and feel the sense of mood and needs of a growing child.
Asanas fit children very well. They appeal to the imagination and are characterized by profound originality. Asanas are easy to demonstrate, imitate, and adapt. Asanas are dynamic, intense, and not always easy to do, so they help the child develop the will power and sensitivity as well as give him the opportunity to learn a lot about himself through doing a variety of movements.
Read more about Yoga For Children
The Features of Yoga for Children
Do not go deep into the spiritual aspects of yoga, doing yoga with children. Yoga for Children classes may include only a few yoga poses, to be practiced together with games, songs, stories. The aim of the kids should be fun at yoga classes as children associate physical activity with fun and feel good. If there’s one thing kids know how to do, it’s a game.
The difference between yoga classes for adults and children is a way of practice. Yoga teachers say they do not teach kids but play with them. It is recommended not to tell the children how they should do the pose but just let them move. Focusing on how to perform a pose properly, takes the children out of creative play and yoga experience.
Why It’s Easy To Teach Kids Yoga
Children are curious by nature. They also love to imitate. Take advantage of the fact that many yoga poses have animal names, such as Cobra, Dog, Fish or Crow. Encourage children to make animal noises as they explore these poses and have them pretend that they are dogs, cobras, or other animals, and ask them to imagine how these animals move.
When you ask children to take the dog pose, they are not kids, practicing posture, they are dogs. You do not tell a dog, how it should look. In classes, teachers are more likely to ask children to bark or wag their tails in the pose of a dog than to instruct them how to move the body to take this pose.
The goal of teachers who teaches yoga for Children is to give children specific tools for everyday practice and the opportunity to use those tools at school and at home. Older children participated in sports find that their athletic capacity improves because of the skills they gain in yoga.
It is beneficial if parents are aware of how to help kids apply pose they learned in class and practice together. It is said that yoga doesn’t just change bodies, it changes lives.
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