Why Kids Like Yoga

By Coleen Durbin-Matrone

Children love to assume postures like a roaring lion, balancing bird, slithering cobra and fluttering butterfly. At Spring Lake’s Center for Unlimited Possibilities all their energetic wildness makes their yoga class for kids extraordinarily healthy fun.

With more than 16 million U.S. adults now practicing yoga according to a Harris Poll, it’s no wonder that children are getting into the act. They too need ways to develop the inner resources that help them deal well with life. Yoga’s holistic focus that benefits adults physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually can do the same for children.

School-age children need to be physically active to be happy and grow. Yet many elementary age children today are limited to one or two physical education classes a week with a few brief recesses scattered through their day. Beyond that, stimulation may be of the couch variety, seated in front of a TV or computer screen, joy sticking an electronic game or maybe even reading a book.

Or they may find a physical outlet in individual or team sports. Often seen as a healthy choice, sports can just as often introduce children to the stress of worry. Will they be selected, make a mistake or lose?

Still, one way or another, stress appears to be a fact of life. The good news is that in the right amount with the right support, it can be funneled to encourage growth and develop skills. Here’s where yoga steps up to help.

So much of a yoga class is directed toward self-awareness that the implicit ongoing message is one of self-discovery. Such discovery empowers a child with personal knowledge that in turn creates a satisfying opportunity for choice.

If, for example, a young yoga student feels nervous prior to a test at school, she can remember how to watch her breath and sit relaxed like a rag doll in her chair rather than to let her mind race and her body tense. Or a child who feels wound up like a rabbit can practice breathing slowly and moving like a turtle for a while.

In a typical eight-week yoga course a child may experience herself as many members of an entire zoo–amphibian, reptile, insect, mammal and bird, as well as the animate and inanimate nature supporting the zoo–water, trees, flowers and rocks. Naming poses after things identifiable from a child’s-eye view of life gives them meaning and makes poses memorable.

Of course parents like the stretching and strengthening physical exercise that’s part of any yoga pose. Classes are fun to watch.

In a children’s class poses are modified in ways that are appropriate to a child’s physical being, and interesting to their emotional and mental self. While experiencing the fun of "being" one or another intriguing species, children feel acknowledged for being their own unique animal. All the little birds in the room are encouraged to have "variations" based on individual ability and creativity, which of changes from one day to the next.

In a constantly changing world that demands structure and adherence to rules, and schools that function based on competitive standards, yoga class provides fun, refreshing and challenging sparkle to a child’s self-esteem. In this non-competitive atmosphere emphasis shifts to self-acceptance and self-care combined with tolerance and respect for others. Such all-important attitudes help equip kids in maintaining their mental and emotional health in a rigorous and diverse world.

To further self-awareness, yoga sessions generally include a kid’s-size-period of quiet relaxation at the end of class. Learning to sit or lie quietly, with concentration and relaxed breathing teaches children how to slow down, notice what’s happening inside, and take some control over their feelings. Teachers often enhance the experience by using relaxing imagery aided with positive messages about the children’s abilities, skills and personal worth to remind them of their competence and wonderful value to the world.

More and more parents are coming to recognize the many vital adult reasons for children to sign up for yoga. All agree that enhanced self- awareness and self-acceptance, better concentration, increased relaxation, appreciation of differences, physical exercise, lack of competition, and reduced stress are definite plusses. But the easy answer comes from kids. Yoga class is simply good fun. It’s totally relaxing. And they get to be part of a zoo every week!

Source: Originally published in Natural Awakenings West Michigan August 2006 Children's Health issue.