Yoga Lessons for Kids
These days it is very disturbing how many kids suffer from psychosomatic disorders. These include sleep disturbances, eating disturbances, headaches and very often wrong posture like sagging shoulders, not to mention, stress related to pressures, competition and aggressiveness in school.
To help kids cope, there must be some type of exercise that involves the whole body, the union of body and mind.
Yoga is one way to return to this unity, to return to perfect harmony. Yoga is movement blended with right breathing and concentration. With Yoga kids find their spirit again, through the body. Yoga makes the kid alert, flexible (physically and mentally), stronger healthier and more confident. Yoga very much helps kids cope with everyday pressures.
If the kids are small, you can wrap the lesson into a tale. Oftentimes tales of valor and adventure, of mystery and fantasy propel us to far away lands. To reach there we have to fly.
So first we get aboard an airplane and all children fly around the world and land on their runway mats. Children love to spread their 'wings.
Since a lot of the Yoga poses are named after birds and animals you can meet the animals in the land of your visit. It's remarkable how many new Yoga poses can be created (we had a dog that is Adho Mukha Svanasana). Oftentimes we come up with famous structures with Tadasana, Trikonasana etc. When you teach kids Yoga you must make it a point to use lots of affirmations, such as 'I am strong as a warrior' in Virabhadrasana or 'I am sharp as an eagle' in Garudasana, so on and so forth. Kids will, likewise, enjoy doing Bhujangasana – they become dangerous as cobra - and Simhasana (they are poised and lions.) There is so much one can write about Yoga lessons for children, you can easily fill a whole volume.
