Only one-third of children in America get daily exercise. In comparison, they can spend more than seven and a half hours in front of a TV or computer screen every single day!
All this screen time and not enough exercise can have adverse effects on their healthy development. And regularly exercise during childhood establishes habits for later in life.
If you’re desperate to get your kids out and about and active then why not try something new? Yoga for kids is becoming increasingly popular. Never heard of it?
Well, it’s about time you did! Read on to find out all about the benefits of yoga for kids.
1. Yoga Teaches Kids to Connect with Their Breath
We’ve all been sat in the park and had our child run over, breathless with excitement and tumbling out of a run. But yoga teaches kids how to control and connect with their own breath.
This is extremely important for their health. Using your breath properly is vital for ensuring enough oxygen reaches your body while you exercise. So it can leave you feeling more energized than before.
Yoga exercises combine controlled movements with inhaling and exhaling to draw attention to our breath and how we use it.
Slower breathing will also improve your child’s lung capacity. This means it can help them when doing other forms of exercise as well.
2. It Focuses on Strengthening Their Bodies
A lot of children’s exercise is cardiovascular. This means that it focuses on burning energy, which is obviously great when you want to tire your kids out!
While cardio, like football, running or swimming, is great it doesn’t always build strength. This is where yoga games for kids can help.
Yoga works with your whole body stretching and strengthening as it goes. Yoga poses require flexibility, which most kids have in buckets! But holding these poses is what makes them stronger.
It’s a great way for kids to build muscle in a natural and gentle way. After all, they’re a long way off doing weights in the gym!
3. Yoga Can Improve Balance
Strength and balance go hand in hand. So the stronger your child gets, the better their balance will be.
Standing yoga poses are great for developing your child’s balance.
Having strong legs and a core will mean your child is more stable. And this is something that will help them across a whole range of activities! It means they’ll be able to play even more safely than before.
As well as balance, yoga can help to improve your child’s spacial awareness. Yoga encourages children to think about their whole body throughout the exercises.
So you can kiss flailing limbs and playground collisions goodbye!
4. It’s a Calming Activity
Yoga isn’t just great for the body, it can help the mind as well! Rather than dashing about, yoga for kids focuses on calming and relaxing your child.
In fact, practicing yoga has huge benefits for your child’s mental health development. This is because yoga provides a calming exercise which allows your child to take time out from hurrying around. This pause for relaxation is something we all need and gives them time to regroup and feel peaceful.
This time allows them to focus on themselves and their objectives. This might sound like a lot for a child, but yoga can actually encourage healthy eating and lifestyle habits that will stay with them for life!
In addition to this, yoga practices can teach your child important life lessons. Yoga encourages acceptance and tolerance in those who practice it. This means your child will come out of yoga class feeling calmer, more peaceful and respectful than before!
This creates a vital foundation for their social and educational development.
5. Yoga for Kids Improves Focus
Practicing yoga doesn’t just benefit kids on the sports field or in the playground. It can also help kids health in the classroom. This is because it boosts their focus.
Yoga is an exercise which encourages stillness and awareness of your own body. This means that kids won’t be dashing around while they do it. In fact, in a yoga class, your child may stay still for up to an hour at a time.
This is great practice for the classroom and can really help kids who are restless or struggle to focus while working.
It may also be a helpful activity for you to introduce to your kids before they start school. Sitting at a desk for several hours a day can be a shock to the system for anyone who’s used to running wild outside. Introducing yoga and other activities, like drawing or reading, can help acclimatize them to the classroom.
6. Yoga Reinforces Positivity and Gets Rid of Competition
Giving children time to relax and focus on themselves encourages a positive appreciation of their skills.
A big part of this is due to the fact that yoga is a non-competitive exercise. Unlike football or lacrosse, there is no winning in yoga, just self-improvement. It’s all about working with your own body to achieve your own goals.
This means that it’s a great option for kids who think they are ‘less sporty’. Sport can often be a huge source of stress for these children and can damage their confidence. But through yoga, they can rebuild this while looking after their bodies.
Let Your Children Enjoy the Benefits of Yoga For Kids Today!
Yoga is an amazing form of exercise for people of all ages. Yoga for kids is no exception to this.
The benefits of yoga for kids will help your child’s body and mind, so what’s not to like?
Check out the health and wellness section of our blog for more fitness inspiration!
