Introducing Your Child to Yoga

For anyone practicing yoga with a baby, it can be a challenge to combine the practice properly with tending to your baby at the same time. It is best to try and integrate and teach your child yoga from an early age, as they will adjust to it being a ‘normal’ practice in life.

I have a 10 month old baby. I have been practicing yoga on and off around her for all of her life, but only in the past 5 months have I been making it a routine and incoorporating it properly into her life. ‘Yoga time’ I say, as I unfold the mat at around the same two different times in the day.

She likes to crawl on top of me and under me as I move through the asanas. I then give her own personal yoga time where we sing ‘the hokie pokie’ and I help her do poses such as ‘happy baby’. Of course being a 10 month old, there are times when she isn’t in the mood to join in and would rather do her own thing.

Babies and children benefit tremendously from yoga, not just the physical benefits from the asanas such as good circulation, range of motion and neuromuscular development, but also emotionally such as learning to have trust in their bodies and their parents, learning about relationships and being able to enjoy that loving contact with you where they know they have your full attention.



They gain strong and balanced bodies, and develop a clear mind along with expanding their creativity. They are able to gain more access to their spiritual selves (children are deeply spiritual but sometimes lose touch with that side due to the society we live in). This time can also be a very special bonding time between you and your child.

There are now many mum and baby yoga classes as well as kid's yoga classes.

Tips to getting your infant/child interested enough to practice yoga with you:










Other tips:






Yoga poses to try with your baby:
Downward dog kisses (adho mukha svanasana)
Bridge pose bounces (setu bandha sarvangasana)
Happy baby (ananda balasana)
Tree Pose (Vrksasana)

Older children might like to try some poses like these ones:
Triangle pose (trikonasana)
Cobra snake pose (bhujangasana)

For children, they seem to be very flexible and can practice lots of different yoga poses.

Categories
#children 's_Health
#yoga
#healthy_parenting

Sources:
'The book of yoga.'
yoga journal


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