Kids and Yoga!

Yoga has many benefits for the mind and body, especially for kids!! Yoga is a great form of exercise that can easily be adapted for children of all ages. Yoga helps improve physical activity and healthy lifestyle changes especially for children that might be intimidated from more strenuous exercise or sports.

Yoga can help to improve physical activity, flexibility, strength, balance, coordination, social skills, and even sensory regulation. Yoga can also help to lower stress, improve sleep, and improve behavior issues with children who have attention deficits and Autism Spectrum Disorders. Yoga poses and breathing exercises can be performed at home, inside, outside, during therapy, and even at schools.

Adding yoga into your child's day sounds like it could be hard...or boring! However, yoga can be so much fun for kids! You can make yoga into a game using dice, cards with yoga poses, or even yoga stories (like Kids' Yoga Day book, "The Night Before Kids' Yoga Day")! Yoga poses can also be made to look like their favorite animal (e.g., cow, cat, donkey, giraffe, etc.), which can help with communication and social skills. This can make it less intimidating and less likely to compare to each other, making it more fun for kids.

Each yoga pose challenges muscles in different planes and positions- sitting, standing, or lying down. Yoga can easily be adapted for children in wheelchairs or other adaptive equipment! Yoga also uses different breathing techniques, which helps with sensory regulation, calming, and strengthening a very important muscle- the diaphragm. The diaphragm is the key muscle in breathing, which also helps to improve the pelvic floor muscles and toileting. So, the diaphragm and breathing help to improve trunk stability and strengthen the abdominal muscles...which in turn helps with our everyday movements and activities.

Join us on Friday, April 9, 2021, for a 5-minute therapist-led yoga sequence by Kids' Yoga Day!

-Whitney Castle, PT, DPT

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2844096/pdf/nihms110852.pdf

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28050484/

https://www.kidsyogaday.com/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4540829/